English: the “Running Chicken” Nebula pictured here is a wide group of emission clouds with active star formation and striking “Bok globules” which are the dark clumps of dust floating in the middle of the nebula. They are about to collapse and ignite from their own collective weight and show the final stages before stars are born. The blue stars are the younger new ones hatched from this cosmic space uterus.

The bright star is λ Centauri and the neighbouring stars are sometimes called the λ Centauri Cluster although it is a foreground object. IC 2944 is the nebulosity around λ Centauri. The brighter area below and left is IC 2948, and the fainter area at upper right is IC 2872.

As a bonus, zoom in and see if you can spot the planetary nebula hiding in this image. It looks like a little round supernova explosion shell. It’s like where’s Wally, except in space.

30 x 3m RGB 21 x 3m Ha 20 x 3m Dark frames. Total 2.5 hours exposure time.

Celestron 9.25″ Edge HD, QHY12 CCD, Hyperstar, UHC filter & Baader highspeed Ha filter.