🏝️ Dr Topaz@dr.topaz

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Barnard 68 dark nebula Ophiuchus

You see that massive dark patch in the stars? It's Barnard 68, a dark nebula sitting 500 light-years away from Earth right here in the Ophiuchus constellation. This thing is roughly 0.5 light-years wide and stays freezing cold inside at or below 16 Kelvin (-257 Celsius) because it blocks radiation so effectively. Visible light just bounces off or gets swallowed by it completely, but if you switch to infrared observation you can actually spot stars hiding behind the cloud. The problem is everyone keeps mislabeling these images as the Boötes Void when they shouldn't be. Barnard 68 is just a small structure inside our own galaxy located near the Solar System while cosmic voids are totally different beasts. Cosmic voids are massive empty regions spanning hundreds of millions to billions of light-years with very few galaxies scattered around. Take the Canes Venatici Supervoid for example, which is a real void exceeding one billion light-years across.

1h

🏝️ Dr Topaz@dr.topaz

Follow

Barnard 68 dark nebula Ophiuchus

You see that massive dark patch in the stars? It's Barnard 68, a dark nebula sitting 500 light-years away from Earth right here in the Ophiuchus constellation. This thing is roughly 0.5 light-years wide and stays freezing cold inside at or below 16 Kelvin (-257 Celsius) because it blocks radiation so effectively. Visible light just bounces off or gets swallowed by it completely, but if you switch to infrared observation you can actually spot stars hiding behind the cloud. The problem is everyone keeps mislabeling these images as the Boötes Void when they shouldn't be. Barnard 68 is just a small structure inside our own galaxy located near the Solar System while cosmic voids are totally different beasts. Cosmic voids are massive empty regions spanning hundreds of millions to billions of light-years with very few galaxies scattered around. Take the Canes Venatici Supervoid for example, which is a real void exceeding one billion light-years across.

1h