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      Keyhole Nebula
      Wallpaper author:
      David Tonucci

      13 Jun 2026

      Keyhole Nebula

      The "Cosmic Keyhole" refers to NGC 1999, a reflection nebula located approximately 1,350 light-years away in the Orion constellation. Named for the mysterious, inky-black hole at its center, the void was originally thought to be a dense cloud of dust (a Bok globule) blocking background starlight.Follow-up observations with telescopes like the Herschel Space Observatory revealed it is not an object blocking light at all. Instead, it is a literal hole or cavity in space, believed to have been carved out by intense energetic jets of plasma expelled by a nearby newborn star

      Dataset from which the image was processed

      NGC 1999

      20 credit

      Open
      Bernard Miller
      T-17

      Keyhole Nebula