NGC 4372 and the Dark Doodad

[daveboling]

dave boling

[Caroluna]

Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere will never get to see the Dark Doodad! (Unless we travel.)

http://www.oneminuteastronomer.com/OMALibrary/dark-doodad.html

@the One Minute Astronomer

Astronomer Bark Bok once said, “All the good stuff is in the southern hemisphere”. You southerners have the two brightest globular clusters, the Magellanic clouds, the Southern Cross, and the Coalsack all high in the southern sky. I have to admit, it’s hard to disagree with Dr. Bok.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Doodad_Nebula

@teh Wiki

The Dark Doodad Nebula is a dark nebula located near the globular cluster NGC 4372, having a length of nearly three degrees. “The NGC 4372 is partially obscured by dust lanes, but still appears as a large object some 10 arcseconds in diameter.” Although officially unnamed, this long molecular cloud has come to be known under this name. It can be found in the southern constellation of Musca (the Fly) with strong binoculars.

It consists of regions of dense gas and dust. This cloud is one of the closest star forming regions to the solar system. Alan Whitman, from the Astronomical Society of New South Wales, has described this as one of the finest dark nebulae—one that is "wonderful, winding, and very definite." Just to the east of the southern end of the Dark Doodad is the globular cluster NGC 4372. The Dark Doodad was named by American amateur astronomer and writer Dennis di Cicco in 1986 upon seeing an image he took from Alice Springs in central Australia. Steven Coe gave it the name Sandqvist 149, because he believed it should be named after the astronomer who found it, though he acknowledges that the popular term prevails.