For me, they are the most impressive pair in the southern night sky, the Southern Cross and the black Coalsack nebula, which is the darkest object in the Milky Way to the naked eye. But this is only an optical illusion, as it appears to be surrounded by countless bright stars. The Coalsack nebula looks more like a scarab, a dung beetle and lucky charm in ancient Egypt. The camera, however, shows details in the nebula, and it appears to be embedded in red clouds of hydrogen. In fact, the dark areas are two cold, dusty bands of cloud that obscure everything behind them. Each of its dust grains is coated with an outer layer of water ice and simple organic molecules such as frozen carbon monoxide. The dust is so dense in some regions that it blocks most of the visible light from the stars behind the clouds. The cloud bands are only around 610 and 790 light years away from us, making the Coalsack nebula one of the closest to us. The moon fits into the Coalsack nebula about 140 times, but also into the Southern Cross.