NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, August 2, 2019

Cha II is one of the three large dark cloud structures in the southern constellation of Chamaeleon about 550 light years distant, and represents an area of new star formation. These structures are one of the closest dark cloud structures to our Sun. You can see that the dark clouds extinguish most of the light from the stars within and behind them. Cha II is considered to contain about 1500 – 2000 solar masses of material. Bright, pinkish objects near the center of the image are Herbig-Haro Objects (HH54). Their shape and color are characteristic of glowing hydrogen gas shocked by jets streaming away from newborn stars. All in all, the colorful stars peering through the dark clouds make for an intriguing astrophotograph.