“Hand of God” photographed in space. Astronomers have caught a cosmic phenomenon that is difficult to observe

What appears in a new telescope image as a ghostly hand reaching across the universe toward a defenseless galaxy is a rare cosmic phenomenon, astronomers reveal, according to CNN.

The Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the “Víctor M. Blanco” telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, has captured a stunning image of the “Hand of God”, a cosmic structure called the “globe comet”, located 1,300 years- light from Earth, in the constellation Pupa.

Comet globules are a type of Bok globules, or dark nebulae. These isolated cosmic clouds are full of dense gas and dust that are surrounded by hot matter. Comet globules are unique because they have long tails like those seen in comets, but that’s the only comet-like thing about them, CNN writes.

Astronomers still don’t know how cometary globules come to exist in such distinct structures.

The new hand-like image, hence the “Hand of God” nickname, shows CG 4, one of the many globular comets found in the Milky Way galaxy. The twisted cloud appears to be heading toward a spiral galaxy known as ESO 257-19 (PGC 21338). But the galaxy is more than 100 million light-years away from the cometary globe.

CG 4 has a hand-like main head of cosmic dust measuring 1.5 light-years in diameter, and a long tail spanning 8 light-years.

A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, which is approximately 9,500 billion kilometers.

A surprising discovery

Astronomers first discovered cometary globules by accident in 1976 while analyzing images captured by the Schmidt telescope. These cosmic phenomena are difficult to observe because they are incredibly faint and the tails of the globules are usually blocked by stellar dust.

But the Dark Energy Camera has a special filter that can detect the incredibly faint red glow emitted by ionized hydrogen, which is present in the outer rim and head of CG 4. Hydrogen produces such a telltale red glow only after being hit by radiation from nearby massive and hot stars.

While the stellar radiation allows the comet’s globe to be visible, it also destroys the globe’s head over time. However, there is enough gas and dust inside the globule to help give birth to several stars the size of our Sun.

Cometary globules can be found throughout our galaxy, but most are in the Gum Nebula, a cloud of incandescent gas thought to be the slowly expanding remnants of a stellar explosion about a million years ago. The Gum Nebula is thought to contain 31 cometary globules in addition to CG 4.

How comet globules are formed

Astronomers believe there are several ways the globules could take on their distinctive comet-like shape.

The globules could once have been round nebulae, such as the iconic Ring Nebula, that were disrupted over time by a supernova—perhaps even the one that formed the Gum Nebula.

But cosmic phenomena can also be the result of winds and radiation released by nearby massive, hot stars.

Astronomers believe stars may be the underlying cause, as all cometary globules found in the Gum Nebula have tails pointing away from the nebula’s center. And at the center of the nebula is the supernova remnant, as well as a pulsar, or rapidly spinning neutron star that formed when a much larger star collapsed and exploded.

Publisher: BP

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