What appears to be a ghostly hand reaching across the universe toward a defenseless spiral galaxy in a new telescope image is a rarely seen cosmic phenomenon, according to astronomers. The Dark Energy Camera captured a stunning image of “God’s Hand,” a cometary globule 1,300 light-years from Earth in the Puppis constellation. The camera is mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
These cosmic phenomena are hard to spot because they’re incredibly faint, and the tails of globules are typically blocked from view by stellar dust. But the Dark Energy Camera has a special filter that can detect the incredibly dim red glow emitted by ionized hydrogen, which is present in the outer rim and head of CG 4. Hydrogen only produces such a telltale red glow after being hit with radiation from nearby hot, massive stars.