Astronomers are crowing in delight over a newly produced image of the Lambda Centauri nebula, which has been nicknamed the Running Chicken or Space Chicken because of its resemblance to a certain earth-bound fowl.

The Chicken is a cloud of luminous hydrogen and newborn stars in the Centaurus constellation, located about 6500 light-years from Earth. The fledgling stars emit an intense ultraviolet glow that illuminates the surrounding hydrogen cloud and makes it glow the red of a rooster's comb.

Scientists at the European Southern Observatory snapped the photo using a telescope's Wide Field Imager. While some people fail to see the chicken emerging from the cosmos, the image remains a stunning one -- you can do your own bird watching/stargazing below.

Good cluck!

space chicken
The mysterious Space Chicken ESO
Space