Barnard 68

Bright orange Antares, the brightest light of Scorpius, the scorpion, rolls across the sky on summer evenings. The beautiful star is low in the south as night falls, and sets in the wee hours of the morning.

Not far to the left of Antares, in the adjoining constellation Ophiuchus, there’s something you can’t see with the unaided eye — at least not yet. But recent observations suggest this dark cloud of gas and dust has a bright future.

Barnard 68 is about twice as massive as the Sun. In photographs, it looks like a black ink spot against the stars of the Milky Way. The dark cloud is 300 to 500 light-years from Earth.

Astronomers have long debated whether this cloud would give birth to a star. In 2009, one group said it would. They said that Barnard 68 was really two clouds that were ramming together. The collision would cause Barnard 68 to collapse and form a star.

And recent observations with Herschel Space Telescope indicate that this theory might be right. Herschel studied far-i