The star-forming nebula CB130-3 in Serpens Cauda
May 2025 - Picture of the Month
I had an amateur image lined up for this month, honest. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the necessary permission to use it. It was a wonderful image of bright and dark nebulae, but now I found myself in need of a professional image as a back-up, and I wanted to stay with the theme.
So this is what I came up with, it's an image of a dense star forming core, CB 130-3, which is about 1½° west of η Serpentis, and is most easily found by looking for LDN 507. I love that warm glow coming from inside the densest region of this nebula where the core is collapsing into a new star.
On most of the deep-sky surveys this region is almost entirely blank, as you might expect for dark nebulae, while this HST image is clearly anything but. The contrast is can be clearly seen using the online ESASky tool where I can overlay this image on the PanSTARRS DR1 Survey. Best of all, it's possible to fade the image out to see a few of the brighter stars. The differences in density between regions in this nebulae can just be discerned in the sky survey with the help of this tool.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.
