Purple Haze

This week’s picture of the week features DG121, an HII region — a cloud of ionised hydrogen — located in the constellation of Puppis (the Stern).

HII regions, a type of emission nebulae, are created when young, massive stars release enough ultraviolet energy to ionise the surrounding gas clouds. These regions tend to have irregular structures and lack sharp boundaries, giving them their hazy, yet photogenic, appearance. The brightest star in the DG121 region, seen near the centre in this picture, is HD 60068. 

This spectacular image was taken with the FORS 2 (FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert. This instrument has been described by astronomers as "the Swiss army knife of instruments at Paranal", because of its ability to study many different astronomical objects in many different ways.