Primordial solar nebula, drawing. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images) De Agostini via Getty Images. Hard and fast details about our solar system’s beginnings are extraordinarily difficult to come by.

The Owl Nebula is an example of a planetary nebula — a type of object that yields glimpses of stellar death in slow motion.

Using the Dark Energy Camera astronomers have found a packed stellar nursery of infant stars in the dark nebula in the 180-light-year-wide Circinus West molecular cloud.

The cone-shaped wakes are up to a fifth of a light-year long. The detailed image was created using the 8.1 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile with a newly commisioned adaptive optics system (GeMS).

Hopefully, when the end finally comes, our Solar System will make a planetary nebula as picturesque as IC 5148. This article was originally published on November 3, 2023.

The solar system is thought to have coalesced from a giant rotating cloud of gas and dust known as the solar nebula about 4.6 billion years ago.

The dark nebula is part of the Circinus West molecular cloud, which stretches for 180 light-years, containing a mass 250,000 times that of the sun.

Astronomers gaze into 'dark nebula' 60 times the size of the solar system (video) Robert Lea. Mon, April 28, 2025 at 3:00 PM UTC. 4 min read.