Marc Lamere took this beautiful image one night on his recent trip to Indonesia. The image is a collage created from several images he took with his iPhone, along with the corresponding star field. Everyone knows you can’t do justice to a sight like this seen with your own eyes, but I can imagine it must have been quite spectacular to see a fresh new dark sky  – like being an explorer looking up to see the sky of an alien planet! 

If you look carefully, you can see hints of the open cluster NGC 2516 in Carina (called the Southern Beehive or Sprinter) about the size of the full moon! Also in view are M41, M46/M47 and near the center, the incredible Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), one of the largest diffuse nebulae in our skies, almost four times as large as and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula!

And then, clear as day… the Coalsack Nebula just to the left of the Southern Cross! It’s a dark nebula, meaning it’s a region of interstellar dust and gas so dense that it obscures the light from stars behind it. It spans about 100 light-years across and is located approximately 600 light-years from Earth, making it one of the closest substantial dark nebulae to our solar system!