The Coalsack Nebula in the constellation of Crux

This chart of the famous small constellation of Crux (The Southern Cross) shows all the stars that can be seen with the naked eye on a clear dark night. This constellation and its neighbours are also home to the huge dark nebula called the Coalsack, which can be easily seen without a telescope as a dark area superposed on the glow of the Milky Way. The location of a particularly dark part of this cloud, which has been imaged in detail using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, is marked with a red circle.