Astronomy Picture of the Day: Meet the universe’s original arcade legend: a hungry cosmic Pac-Man glowing 9,500 light-years away!

 

#NASA, #Space, #astronomy, #διάστημα

This isn’t digital art or a filter. It’s NGC 281, a real stellar nursery in Cassiopeia where new stars are being born right now. Thick lanes of dark dust slice across a blazing cloud of gas, carving the unmistakable “mouth” that earned the nebula its nickname. It looks like the 1980s video-game icon is taking a giant bite out of the cosmos.

The fierce reds and oranges come from vast clouds of ionized hydrogen, set alight by the ultraviolet blast from a young, scorching cluster of massive stars (IC 1590) sitting at the heart of the nebula. Cooler blue-cyan hues trace ionized oxygen, painting the interior like a ghostly lantern. Dark Bok globules — dense knots of dust and gas — hide even younger stars still forming in the shadows. Spanning roughly 48 light-years across in the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way, this emission nebula is both a factory and a time capsule: a snapshot of how stars like our Sun once began. The next time you look toward Cassiopeia’s familiar “W,” remember a hungry Pac-Man is still chomping away in the dark