“Huge nearby space cloud was invisible … until now”

Dotted throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond are vast structures known as molecular clouds. Made up mostly of hydrogen gas and dust, these clouds are often regions of intense star formation. And astronomers have just identified one of the closest molecular clouds ever seen, which has long remained undetected on Earth’s doorstep.
The cloud, now named Eos, is only some 300 light-years away. It’s located on the edge of the Local Bubble, a huge low-density “cavity” in space that encases our solar system. And Eos is one of the largest single structures ever seen in space. If you could see it with the unaided eye, it would span 40 full moons across the sky.












