                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                              2024 September 24
     A brown dusty nebula is shown in front of a star field. The nebula
   looks to some like a baboon, with red emission stemming from the mouth
   and blue reflection from the eyes. Please see the explanation for more
                            detailed information.

                    NGC 6727: The Rampaging Baboon Nebula
               Image Credit & Copyright: Alpha Zhang & Ting Yu

   Explanation: This dusty region is forming stars. Part of a sprawling
   molecular cloud complex that resembles, to some, a rampaging baboon,
   the region is a relatively close by 500 light-years away toward the
   constellation Corona Australis. That's about one third the distance of
   the more famous stellar nursery known as the Orion Nebula. Mixed with
   bright nebulosities, the brown dust clouds effectively block light from
   more distant background stars in the Milky Way and obscure from view
   embedded stars still in the process of formation. The eyes of the dust
   creature in the featured image are actually blue reflection nebulas
   cataloged as NGC 6726, 6727, 6729, and IC 4812, while the red mouth
   glows with light emitted by hydrogen gas. Just to the upper left of the
   baboon's head is NGC 6723, a whole globular cluster of stars nearly
   30,000 light years in the distance.

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