LDN 43 appears as a dusty dark Cosmic Bat. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN 7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with eerie light, the bat is lit up from inside by dense gaseous knots that have just formed young stars.

Snaking across the starfields of the constellation Ophiuchus, LDN 43 is an obscure dark nebula and star forming region that contains the embedded reflection nebulae RNO 90 and RNO 91, which are illuminated by young stellar objects (YSO).

LDN 43 has received lots of attention from professional astronomers seeking to understand the mysteries of star formation. It is one of the closest star forming regions with a distance of slightly more than 500 light years.

The area around it suffers from a high degree of dust extinction. This is best illustrated by the interstellar reddening of the majority of the stars in this image as well a few distant background galaxies. Any light traveling from these sources passes through this veil of dust, which absorbs the blue light making everything appear more red than it actually is. Interstellar dust extinction is prevalent in many parts of the Milky Way and many galaxies would shine more brightly if not for this intervening dust.