A 'Cosmic Hawk' with 'Baby' Stars: Nebula RCW 36 in Vela (infrared) | ESO

A 'Cosmic Hawk' with 'Baby' Stars: Nebula RCW 36 in Vela (infrared) | ESO

This picture taken with the European Southern Observatory ’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), seems to have captured a "cosmic hawk" as it spans its "wings." While the dark clouds in the middle of the image make up the head and body of the "bird of prey", the filaments extending away from the body to the left and right compose its "wings". Below it, is a mesmerizing blue nebula with massive newly born stars. Their intense radiation make the gas around them glow brightly.

Altogether the image shows the RCW 36 nebula, located about 2,300 light-years away in the Vela constellation. Coincidently, this nebula, resembling a hawk, was also captured by a hawk—the HAWK-I instrument on the VLT. While the most apparent stars in this image may be the massive and bright baby stars, the astronomers behind this image are actually more interested in hidden, very dim stars called brown dwarfs—“objects unable to fuse hydrogen in their cores,” explains Afonso do Brito do Vale, a PhD student at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Portugal, and the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, France, and lead author of a new paper where this image was presented.

HAWK-I is perfectly suited for this task. It observes at infrared wavelengths, where these cold failed stars are more easily spotted, and it can correct atmospheric turbulence with adaptive optics, delivering sharp images like this one. Besides providing invaluable data to understand how brown dwarfs form, the study produced a striking image of “massive stars ‘pushing’ away the clouds of gas and dust around them almost like an animal breaking through its eggshell for the first time,” as do Brito do Vale describes. Who knows, perhaps the "cosmic hawk" is guarding his baby stars—watching over them as they “hatch”.

Image Description: A telescope image of a cosmic gas cloud. The cloud is full of wispy filaments that shine brightly in shades of pink and orange, especially in the lower-right part of the image, where there is a higher concentration of stars. Dark dust lanes partially block some areas of the nebula.

Credit: ESO/A. R. G. do Brito do Vale et al.
Release Date: March 2, 2026

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