The European Southern Observatory released a photo Wednesday of what appears to be a black void where stars should've been. However, stars are not disappearing. The black void in the photo is Lynds Dark Nebula 483, a region of space filled with dust and gas.
While LDN 483 looks like an ominous dark cloud, it is in clouds of dust and gas like it that stars actually start out from.
Located around 700 light-years away from the Serpens constellation, it contains enough dust and gas to block out visible light from stars in the background. Making it look like a dark cloud of doom, this property qualifies it to be called a dark nebula.
Astronomers studying the formation of stars in LDN 483 has seen some of the youngest observable baby stars nestled deep within the dark nebula's interior. At this point, these stars are comparable to babies within mere hours of being born.
Starting out as a contracting ball of dust and gas, a baby star is relatively cool and is only seen in long-wavelength submillimeter types of light. However, pressure and temperature are beginning to rise within the baby star's core.
This early period of development for a star lasts for just thousands of years, a tiny fraction of its lifespan given it can live for up to billions of years. The next stage of development will happen over several million years, in which a star will start to grow denser and warmer. It will start giving off stronger emissions, going from far- to near-infrared light before achieving visible light. After that, it will be fully luminous, becoming visible just like older stars.
As more stars develop from LDN 483, the dark nebula will start to lose its opacity and disperse. The background stars that are blocked now will start to show once again, but this can't be expected to happen until at least after a few million years. When it does, the newly formed stars that grew out of LDN 483 will outshine those around them.
A foremost intergovernmental astronomy organization, the ESO has the support of 15 countries: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Finland, France, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Belgium and Austria. The observatory operates three sites: Chajnantor, Paranal and La Silla. The LDN 483 image was captured using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
