Description:
Mosaic image of 6 panels imaged through R, G and B filters from Warrumbungle National Park, Australia.
The South Celestial Serpent, also known as MW9 or Mandel-Wilson 9, is a vast and extremely faint integrated flux nebula winding through the southern sky near the south celestial pole. Unlike bright emission or reflection nebulae, it is not lit by a nearby young star or cluster, but instead glows softly under the combined light of the Milky Way itself.
Made of diffuse interstellar dust, gas, hydrogen and carbon monoxide, the Serpent appears as a delicate ribbon of galactic cirrus stretching across the constellation Apus. Its faint dusty structure can even drift across the line of sight to distant galaxies such as IC 4633, partly veiling them behind foreground material from our own Galaxy.