This image shows a series of objects located in the southern constellation of Puppis at a declination of -42 degrees.
BBW56 is one of 400 southern hemisphere objects catalogued by Brand, Blitz and Wouterloot. The catalogue was published in 1986.
As shown in my mouseover, 3 cometary globules are contained within this cloud. Cometary globules were first identified in 1976. They are molecular clouds with comet-like morphology, consisting of compact heads and long faint tails. Most CG's are found in the nearby Gum nebula, as these 3 are. Surprisingly, I have never found a complete list of them to know how many exist, but SIMBAD lists 39 of them overall. All of the Gum nebula CGs point to the same central point, which is about 4 degrees left of this image.
These 3 cometary globules are not as visually impressive as
CG4 and
LBN 438, but still are interesting to see. Notice that they are all point left, just like the overall cloud. Scientists are still trying to understand their formation mechanism. One theory is that CG's were originally spherical clouds which were shocked into their comet-like form by the blast wave from a supernova explosion.
I think I see a 4th CG here in the exact center of the nebula, but it does not have a CG designation that I could find. To my eyes, it looks more like a CG than the other 3 identified CG in this image.
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