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Cloud 9, Starless Gas Cloud Video

This annotated video shows the location of Cloud-9 on the sky. As the video zooms into this gas-rich, dark-matter cloud, it becomes evident that there are no stars within it. Only background galaxies appear behind Cloud-9, which has survived since the universe’s early days.

  • Release Date
    January 5, 2026
  • Science Release
    NASA’s Hubble Examines Cloud-9, First of New Type of Object
    Read the release
  • Credit
    Science: NASA, ESA, VLA, Gagandeep Anand (STScI), Alejandro Benitez-Llambay (University of Milano-Bicocca); Visualization: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

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  • Video: 1080 × 1920, 30 FPS
    mp4 (11.2 MB)
  • Video: 720 × 1280, 30 FPS
    mp4 (4.98 MB)

Related Images & Videos

A region of space mostly filled with background galaxies, with one prominent star at upper left. A large blob of purple haze occupies much of the field. Within the purple region, an unremarkable area is outlined with a dashed white circle.

Cloud 9, Starless Gas Cloud

Magenta is radio data from the ground-based Very Large Array (VLA) showing the presence of Cloud-9. The dashed circle marks the area where researchers focused their search for stars. Hubble found no stars within Cloud-9. The few objects within its boundaries are background galaxies.

An image labeled u201cCloud 9 HST ACS WFCu201d. Below that, a color key shows F606W in blue, F814W in orange, and Radio VLA in purple. A region of space mostly filled with background galaxies, with one prominent star at upper left. A large blob of purple haze occupies much of the field. Within the purple region, an unremarkable area is outlined with a dashed white circle. At lower left, a scale bar extending about one-sixth of the image is labeled 2,000 light-years and 30 arcseconds. At lower right are compass arrows with east pointing to 10 ou2019clock and north pointing to 2 ou2019clock.

Cloud 9, Starless Gas Cloud Compass Image

This is an annotated composite image of Cloud-9, a Reionization-Limited H I Cloud (RELHIC), as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) and the ground-based Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope.

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Details

Last Updated
Jan 05, 2026
Location
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Contact
Media

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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