The subject of this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is spiral galaxy IC 4633, located 100 million light-years away in the constellation Apusa. IC 4633 is a star-forming galaxy that also contains an active galactic nucleus. From our perspective, the galaxy is mostly tilted towards us, giving astronomers a pretty good view of billions of stars.

However, we cannot fully appreciate the properties of this galaxy (at least in visible light) because it is partially obscured by a dark dust lane (the lower right third of the image). This dark nebula is part of the Chameleon star-forming region, located just 500 light-years away in the neighboring part of our Milky Way galaxy. Dark clouds in the Chameleon region cover a large area of ​​the southern sky, hiding the eponymous constellation but also encroaching on neighboring constellations such as Apus. The cloud is well studied for its wealth of young stars, particularly the Cha I cloud imaged by Hubble and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

The cloud above IC 4633 lies east of the famous Cha I, II, and III, also known as MW9 and the Southern Celestial Serpent. Classified as the Integrated Stream Nebula (IFN), a cloud of gas and dust that is not near any stars in the Milky Way galaxy and is only faintly illuminated by the collective light of all the stars in the galaxy, this wide, narrow path of faint gas serpents above the southern celestial pole is much larger than its neighbors. has a more subdued look. Although this image shows only a small portion of it, Hubble has no trouble distinguishing the Southern Serpent.