The Serpens Cloud is a dark molecular cloud in Serpens Cauda where stars are forming right now, hidden from visible light and revealed by infrared telescopes.
At a glance
| type | nebula |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 1,630 light-years (501 pc) |
| its light left it | 1,630 years ago |
| size in the piece | about 65 light-years acrossmodel |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with. Model marks a property of the piece’s galaxy model rather than a measurement.
About Serpens Cloud
The Serpens Cloud is a cold, dense cloud of molecular hydrogen and dust in the tail half of the constellation Serpens, the only constellation split into two separate pieces. It lies in the same direction as the Aquila Rift, the dark lane that splits the summer Milky Way. Optical photographs show almost nothing there, because the dust swallows the light of everything inside it.
At infrared and submillimetre wavelengths the cloud lights up. Its densest knot, Serpens Main, holds a tightly packed cluster of protostars still wrapped in their birth envelopes, with jets and outflows tearing through the surrounding gas. Infrared surveys found a second young cluster, Serpens South, strung along a dark filament nearby. Because these stars are so young and so close together, the region is a standard place to study how clusters assemble.
What you see in the piece
The piece draws it as dark dust, so it shows up as an absence: a patch where the stars behind it are dimmed and reddened. Switch the band row to infrared to see what the dust hides.
Questions
How far away is the Serpens Cloud?
The Serpens Cloud is 1,630 light-years (501 pc) from the Sun, so the light you could see from it left 1,630 years ago.