The Dark Wolf Nebula shows off a howling good look in an awesome Halloween image (video)

The patrons of the Slaughtered Lamb, the traditional Yorkshire pub with striking decor in John Landis’s American Werewolf in London, may want to keep their werewolf on the back burner, but the European Southern Observatory (ESO) saw Halloween as the perfect opportunity to let an image apart from a cosmic beast.

This blood-curdling celestial werewolf, depicted by the Very large telescope (VLT) Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile is home to the aptly named ‘Dark Wolf Nebula’. In the image, the “wolf’s head” is clearly visible, and just below this striking appearance are dark claws that almost resemble this celestial lycanthrope about to take a swipe at a terrified victim.

Part of the larger Gum 55 mistthe Dark Wolf Nebula, couldn’t be further from the moors of East Proctor, the setting for the unforgettable werewolf attack that opens Landis’ 1981 classic that many of us will be heading to this Halloween night for a horror fix. This nebula is located around 5,300 light years of the earth near the heart of the Milky Way.

Don’t be fooled by the dark parts of the Dark Wolf Nebula that seem to make up this cosmic terror. They are anything but empty. These dark places are filled with dense and cold cosmic gas and dust.