Infant Solar System in Ophiuchus

The image is a three-colour reproduction of the discovery image of strange-looking object (nicknamed the "Flying Saucer" by the astronomers), obtained with the SOFI multi-mode instrument at the ESO 3.5-m New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the La Silla Observatory. Compared to the unresolved stars in the field, the image of this object appears extended. Two characteristic reflection nebulae are barely visible, together with a marginally resolved dark dust lane in front of the star and oriented East-West.

This is a colour composite image combining exposures through near-infrared J-, H- and K S filters, here rendered as blue, green and red, respectively, and with logarithmic colour stretch obtained with NTT/SOFI. The field size shown here is 30 x 30 arcsec² and the exposure time is 24 min in each of the three filters. The seeing was 0.7 arcsec FWHM, and the pixel size is 0.292 arcsec. North is up and East is left.