The realm of buried giants
Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - 09:50
in Astronomy & Space
RCW 106 is a sprawling cloud of gas and dust located about 12 000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Norma (The Carpenter's Square). The region gets its name from being the 106th entry in a catalogue of H II regions in the southern Milky Way. H II regions like RCW 106 are clouds of hydrogen gas that are being ionised by the intense starlight of scorching-hot, young stars, causing them to glow and display weird and wonderful shapes.