The first thing I noticed when looking at this picture was the red color of the stars behind this massive expanse of dust. These stars are not actually red (well, maybe some of them are), but instead the dust is blogging all other wavelengths of visible light, and allowing through primarily only the red. While this enormous wave of interstellar dust is not dense at all, it stretches for hundreds of light years, making it appear to be nearly a completely solid block of dirt. This cloud is referred to as NGC 2174, and is located in the constellation Orion. While the picture may lead you to believe that it only takes up a tiny part of the sky, the mass of this nebula actually stretches a length greater than the full moon, from the viewpoint of the Earth. In reality however, this mass is thousands of light years long.
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