A Swan’s Starry Lake

Credit: ESO/INAF-VST/OmegaCAM. Acknowl­edge­ment: OmegaCen/Astro-WISE/Kapteyn Institute

A swan glides in a glow­ing lake in this image of the Swan Neb­ula from the Euro­pean South­ern Observatory’s VST telescope.

Explore the plumes of gas that make up the swan’s body and neck. Some observers see the Greek let­ter omega in the nebula’s dust clouds. Oth­ers see a barber’s pole. What images or sto­ries do you see? Tell us by leav­ing a note below.

The Swan Neb­ula, also known as Messier 17 or the Omega Neb­ula, is a vast region of gas and dust near the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy. This region is rich in dust and hydro­gen gas mak­ing it a per­fect place for new stars to form. In neb­u­lae, grav­ity pulls gas and dust together. If enough dust and gas com­presses together, the clump can begin to fuse hydro­gen. A star is born pro­duc­ing its own light and heat. Hot, young stars dom­i­nate the Swan Neb­ula. Sear­ing winds from these young stars carve pat­terns and bub­bles in the neb­ula while scorch­ing ultra­vi­o­let light warms and ener­gizes the neb­ula caus­ing it to glow.

The Swan Neb­ula is located about 5,000 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Sagit­tar­ius the Archer. It takes light zip­ping along at more than six tril­lion miles per year more than 15 years to cross the neb­ula. Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux dis­cov­ered the neb­ula in 1745. Charles Messier added it to his cat­a­log in 1764.