Dusty Dark Doodad Casts a Silhouette Across Musca's Starfield

APOD's 2026-07-31 entry highlights the Dark Doodad Nebula, a dusty silhouette roughly 700 light-years away and about 30 light-years long, seen against rich starfields south of the Coalsack near the Musca constellation; near its southern tip sits globular cluster NGC 4372, a background Milky Way object about 20,000 light-years distant. The dark cloud is part of the Musca molecular cloud, and the image was captured by Alessandro Cipolat Bares; the name was popularized by Dennis di Cicco in 1986.