First close-up view of "cotton candy" nebula captured by world's largest cosmic telescope

CBS News

01-07-2025

The world's largest telescope captured a deep-space nebula — an interstellar cloud of gas and dust that can produce new stars — in stunning detail, providing the first close-up view to date of the cosmic phenomenon.
Scientists recently unveiled images from Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a new station located in the Andes Mountains of Chile and funded by the United States, which houses a powerful telescope containing the biggest digital camera on the planet.
Its precision allows the telescope to peer far into space, with galaxies tens of millions of light-years away from Earth among the subjects of the observatory's debut portraits of cosmos. Also pictured is the "cotton candy" nebula, which earned that nickname because of its bright pink and blue pattern.
This annotated image offers a closer look at the region surrounding the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae.
NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Officially, the swirling mass is called the Trifid Nebula, and it exists about 5,000 light-years from Earth, according to the Rubin Observatory. Nearby is the Lagoon Nebula, another colorful cloud, which is located about 4,000 light-years away and appears alongside Trifid in the observatory's latest images. Both are in the constellation Sagittarius, according to the Rubin Observatory.
Zoomed-in views of the nebulae are seen in a video shared by the observatory, showcasing the Trifid and Lagoon formations at a scale never seen before. The composite image was created from more than 678 different exposures taken over a 7-hour period by the camera that powers the observatory's massive telescope.
The Trifid nebula, nicknamed the "cotton candy" nebula because of its colorful swirls, is pictured in this screenshot from a video shared by the Vera Rubin Observatory.
NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
The telescope's long-term mission is set to begin later this year, when it will perform nightly scans of the sky for the next decade in an effort to learn more about the early universe and some of its properties that still are not well-understood, like dark energy.
Brian Stone, the chief of staff at the National Science Foundation who currently performs the duties of the foundation's director, said in a statement that the Rubin Observatory is expected to "capture more information about our Universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined."
"Through this remarkable scientific facility, we will explore many cosmic mysteries, including the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the Universe," his statement said.