IC 2944 Running Chicken Nebula

IC 2944 (also known as the Centauri Lambda Nebula, sometimes referred to as C 100) is a region of the southern Milky Way in the constellation Centaurus. its distance is about 2000 parsecs (6500 light years) and it is part of the Sagittarius Arm, the closest spiral arm of the Milky Way located more internally than ours.

The most well-known feature of this cloud is the presence of some dark cocoons, known as Thackeray's globules; Due to their instability, there would be no active star formation phenomena inside them, while their origin is due to the disruptive action of the radiation of the massive stars present in the region, which over time has eroded an ancient molecular cloud.

The galactic environment in which this cloud is found is among the most complex known among the spiral arms of the Milky Way: within a radius of just 500 parsecs from it there are in fact some of the most conspicuous stellar objects and nebulae in the southern sky; among these stands out the Carina Nebula, the massive clusters Tr 14 and Tr 16, as well as the bright cluster NGC 4755, the famous Casket of Jewels, visible in the constellation of the Southern Cross, plus other bright OB associations.