RCW 36: A bird of prey sails away

This nebula, which resembles a hawk, boasts an open cluster of massive young stars at its heart, surrounded by glowing clouds of hydrogen gas. | Published: July 28, 2026 Credit: ESO/A.R.G. do Brito do Vale et al. Credit: ESO/A.R.G. do Brito do Vale et al. In the early 1960s, Alexander Rodgers, Colin Campbell, and John Whiteoak compiled a catalog of emission nebulae in the southern Milky Way. A particularly impressive entry, RCW 36, resides 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Vela the Sails. RCW 36 boasts an open cluster of massive young stars at its heart, surrounded by glowing clouds of hydrogen gas destined to birth future generations. Thick ropes of cold gas and dust complete the picture. Some observers see a hawk in this nebula, with the dark body and head near the center and filamentary wings extending to the left and right. Appropriately enough, astronomers captured this image with the European Southern Observatory’s High Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager (HAWK-I). The camera views the cosmos through one of the 8-meter mirrors of the Very Large Telescope.