The Bat Shadow (Serpens Nebula)

Shadows in the stellar nursery. The Serpens Nebula offers a dramatic, almost Gothic interplay of light and dark, perfect for the 'Dark Academia' aesthetic. At the center lies the 'Bat Shadow'—a literal hourglass-shaped darkness cast by a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star. This shadow 'flaps' over time as the disk shifts, a dynamic marker of time on a cosmic scale.

To the upper left, bright red streaks cut through the orange dust—these are 'protostellar outflows,' shockwaves created by jets of gas slamming into the nebula at supersonic speeds. They are aligned, indicating the synchronized birth of siblings in this stellar family. The image is a violent, dynamic scene of creation, frozen in a 1,300-year-old photon stream. The 'Eye-Shaped Crevice' to the right adds to the mysterious, almost biological quality of the piece.

Scientific provenance

Editions

• Fine Art — museum-grade pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Metallic. Numbered edition of 50 per size, with a Numbered Certificate of Authenticity.
• Poster — pigment print on archival photo paper. Open edition.
• Framed or unframed — either edition can be framed in a slim black frame with shatter-resistant acrylic glazing, ready to hang (50 × 50 and 50 × 70 cm). Framed works ship free within the EU; unframed prints ship rolled in a protective tube.

Printed to order in our Vilnius studio on an Epson SureColor P20500 with UltraChrome PRO12 pigment inks, and dispatched within 5–7 business days. Each size is composed for its own proportions: we crop, we never stretch, and we never add or generate image content.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory), J. Green (Space Telescope Science Institute). Licensed under CC BY 4.0; cropped and colour-managed for print. UniverseMuseum is an independent studio and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI or the Rubin Observatory.