Positioned more than 2000 light-years away in an otherwise unremarkable region of the constellation Orion, a formation dubbed the Cosmic Bat seems to spread its vast wings.
Its spectacular appearance is aided in no small measure by young stars situated at its core, their light doing all sorts of visually interesting things to vast clouds of interstellar dust.
To astronomers, the Bat is more formally known as NGC 1788. Too faint to be seen by the naked eye, its beauty, in this instance, is revealed by the Very Large Telescope, operated by the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
Originally published by Cosmos as A cosmic bat in flight
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