European Southern Observatory releases beautiful photo of Cone Nebula which looks like witch tower

On the occasion of its 60th anniversary, the European Southern Observatory published a beautiful photo of the Cone Nebula, which looks like a witch tower. The photo was taken with the Very Large Telescope's FORS2 (FOcal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2) instrument.

The Cone Nebula is part of the NGC 2264 cluster in the Monoceros (Unicorn) constellation, 2,500 light-years away from Earth. The length of the central "pillar," which can be seen in the photo, is about seven light years. It consists of dust and gas which are created by each other, and as a result, they get the shapes that we see in the photo.

Active star formation usually occurs in such nebulae. This process can be seen in more detail using devices working in the infrared range; such, for example, are installed on the James Webb Space Telescope.

The image taken by the Very Large Telescope does not show the "inside" of the nebula, particularly what lies beyond the thick layer of dust, but it does show details that are invisible at other wavelengths. If the same nebula is photographed by the James Webb telescope, the photo will be completely different, as, for example, in the case of the famous "Pillars of Creation" which were photographed by both the James Webb and the Hubble telescopes.