Wispy trails of ghosts in the sky? Check out this image from ESO’s Paranal Observatory

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has shared a picture of two stellar nurseries that look like the wispy trails of ghosts in the sky. Taken from ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, the dark clouds in this image are actually two dark nebulae - Barnard 92 (right) and Barnard 93 (left).

Dark nebulae are dense clouds of gas and dust that completely blocks out visible wavelengths of light from objects behind them, creating these hazy ghostlike features.

"This whole region of space imaged here is actually part of a much larger stellar complex, called the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (or Messier 24, catalogued by Charles Messier in 1764). This area is so rich in stars that it is clearly visible to the naked eye during dark nights, in the constellation of Sagittarius," ESO wrote in a post on Monday.

1/ No need to call the ghostbusters! 👻 While these dark clouds in our latest Picture of the Week almost resemble wispy trails of ghosts in the sky, they are actually two dark nebulae: Barnard 92 (right) and Barnard 93 (left).🔗 https://t.co/WmVNqeCbB2 pic.twitter.com/RddIrkQkQu

— ESO (@ESO) September 12, 2022

This stunning image was captured using OmegaCAM, a whopping 268 million pixel camera onboard the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). Located at ESO's Paranal Observatory, VST is one of the largest telescopes in the world designed for surveying the sky in visible light while the OmegaCAM is designed for capturing wide fields like this image, where you could impressively fit four full Moons. According to ESO, OmegaCAM can produce images 16 times bigger than Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys(ACS).

This image is part of the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), which has mapped diffuse nebulae as well as both young and evolved stars in our galaxy.