The Baby Eagle

Its outline suggests a bird's head, which earned it two nicknames: the Baby Eagle, or the Vulture Head. It is a small cloud of gas and dust in the constellation of Taurus, about 450 light-years away, right next to the famous Pleiades in the sky.

Its beauty lies in its dual nature. The outer skin, lit by neighbouring stars, gives off a pale glow: this is a reflection nebula, like dust in a sunbeam. But its core is so dense and opaque that no light passes through it: a dark nebula, catalogued as Barnard 207.

And that dark heart is not empty: a star is being born inside it. Still buried in its cocoon of gas, it has not really begun to shine; astronomers call such a star in the making a protostar. The Baby Eagle is an extremely faint object that yields only to long exposures.