Home Europe This image from ESA’s Planck satellite shows a celestial feature named the...

This image from ESA’s Planck satellite shows a celestial feature named the Polar…

This image from ESA’s Planck satellite shows a celestial feature named the Polaris Flare. This name is somewhat misleading; despite its name, this is not a flare but a 10 light-year-wide bundle of dusty filaments in the constellation of Ursa Minor, some 500 light-years away. This image is not a true-colour view, nor is it an artistic impression, rather it comprises observations from Planck, which operated between 2009 and 2013, more a ‘magnetic map’. See http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/08/Planck_s_flame-filled_view_of_the_Polaris_Flare