This eerie, darkish silhouette is a cometary globule designated GN 16.43.7.01. Regardless of their title, cometary globules don’t have anything to do with comets, past having the same form to a dusty head with a tail. Cometary globules are a variation of Bok globules, that are remoted pockets of dense, darkish mud and gasoline inside which situations are ripe for star formation. Within the case of this cometary globule, winds of radiation from a gaggle of luminous stars simply out of shot are sculpting the Bok globule right into a tail-like form. Whereas Bok globules had been found by the Dutch–American astronomer Bart Bok within the Nineteen Forties, their cometary globule variation was first seen solely as not too long ago as 1976.
This picture of GN 16.43.7.01 was taken by the VLT Survey Telescope on the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The Darkish Tower, as additionally it is recognized, is discovered 5,000 mild years away within the constellation of Scorpius, the Scorpion.
