NGC 6726 (Detail)

NGC 6726, Cosmic dust clouds and young, energetic stars in this large panorama, less than 500 light-years away toward the northern boundary of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown. The dust clouds effectively block light from more distant background stars in the Milky Way. But the striking complex of the blue reflection nebulae cataloged as NGC 6726 produce a characteristic color as blue light from the region’s young, hot stars are reflected by the cosmic dust. The small red hooked shaped feature just to the left of the large blue area is called a Herbig-Haro object.  These are energetic jets of gas ejected by newborn stars that collide with surrounding nebula, creating glowing shock waves.

The large dark nebula surrounding the blue reflection nebula NGC 6726 is the Corona Australis Molecular Cloud. Located about 420–500 light-years away, it is a dense, nearby star-forming region, featuring dark dust lanes that obscure background stars and create striking contrast with the blue reflection nebula. Unlike most renditions of this large area I have brought out the detail and color of this molecular cloud. The globular cluster in the very lower right is known as NGC 6723, which appears close by but is actually 29,000ly away and is 13 billion years old, and is not part of the region which is only 420-500 light years away. The detail in area in the NGC 6726(blue oval) and the NGC 6723 star cluster comes from two images from the Planewave CDK17 and the molecular cloud around the blue NGC 6726 area comes from a Planewave DR350.