“Battle Dragons” illuminates the lesser known constellations in the southern sky: Space Photo of the Week:

From cat paws to tadpoles in space, humans love to see animals in the night sky, but “The Battle of the Ara” must be one of the most dramatic things. Astronomers using Chilean dark energy cameras (decams) have published a seductive new image that evokes the mythical duel of two heavenly beasts.

The striking image appears to show two dragon heads emerging from dense clouds of cosmic dust. Their shining, supple shapes are shaped by the powerful stellar winds emitted from bright young stars born within the nebula. Most of them are millions of years old.

The fascinating shape created by the interaction of radiation and dust is officially known as NGC 6188. This is a luminescent nebula that forms when the star’s intense radiation turns the gas into energy, and according to NASA it emits light. It is located in the lesser known constellations Ara and can only be observed from the southern hemisphere. There, just below the tail of the Scorpius, it is the “Scorpion.” NGC 6188 is near the edge of the giant molecular cloud where stars form.

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The red of NGC 6188 comes from the ionized hydrogen lit by 27 very bright stars. Very bright stars, on the scale of the universe millions of years ago, give newborns an incredible depth to their images. The ultraviolet rays of the stellar wind from these stars ignited, carved and shaped the dragon’s heads. According to NASA, this ultraviolet ray is flooded with gas with enough energy to strip electrons from hydrogen atoms in nebulae. This is called ionization. When atoms recombine, they emit energy in the form of photons, causing nebula gas to shine.

The decam is attached to a Victor M. swing 4-meter telescope at the Celerotroro Observatory of the US National Science Foundation in Chile.

For sublime space images, see Space Photos in this week’s archives.