Corona Australis Reflection Nebula Wall Poster

Five hundred light years away in the Corona Australis region, a group of stars lights up a small part of a huge cloud of dust, producing the beautiful blue reflection nebulae NGC 6726-27 seen in this poster. This is the brightest part of a very large but faint nebula that extends over many square degrees of sky. But this large nebula, which contains enough material to make 130 Sun-like stars, is not a simple conjunction of bright stars and dust. At least two small, well-defined red nebulae can be seen, probably jets emitted from still-hidden stars in the dust cloud. The nebulae glow not by reflecting light from the stars but by absorbing their energy and re-emitting it in characteristics colors.

This picture was made from a series of three photographic plates taken at the prime focus of the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope, located in Siding Spring Mountain, New South Wales, Australia. The photograph was produced by combining images taken separately in red, green and blue light. This complex process was necessary because color films are not sensitive enough to record very faint objects. This is an accurate reflection of the colors of the universe, much as the eye might see them if it could be made a million times more sensitive.

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