Cosmic Reef
Seeing stars form or go supernova is not exactly easy to capture on camera. Yet we were treated to one of the most breathtaking photos captured by NASA and the ESA when they actually caught stars being born. This image looks like an amazing art piece that you’d see an artist put together. However, it is actually an image of a real event in space. It comes from one of the turbulent stellar nurseries that NASA and ESA observed over 30 years. The image shows a giant nebula known as NGC 2014 and its smaller neighbor NGC 2020.
Together, they are part of the infamous Large Magellanic Cloud that we discussed earlier in the article. After taking a look at it, many began calling it the “Cosmic Reef,” due to how it looks like an undersea reef in space. The Cosmic Reef might be 163,000 lightyears away but the image captured is tremendous. To be able to capture such an image took incredible skill and timing. However, what’s so interesting here is that this particular image was not taken at the exact time these nebulae were interacting. It actually happened 163,000 Earth years ago, which makes you obviously wonder what’s going on there today!