dark nebula

American  

noun

Astronomy.

1. a cloud of interstellar gas and dust that absorbs and thus obscures the light from stars behind it, appearing as a dark patch in front of a bright nebula or in an otherwise bright area of sky.

---

dark nebula British  

noun

1. a type of nebula that is observed by its blocking of radiation from other sources See nebula

---

dark nebula Scientific  

1. See absorption nebula

---

Etymology

Origin of dark nebula

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

"It is very difficult to capture dark nebula with any kind of clarity," explained Dr Ed Bloomer.

From BBC

Developer Free Lunch Design says its Dark Nebula game has been downloaded more than 6m times on iOS, giving it a good base for its expansion to Android.

From The Guardian

This is what’s known as a “dark nebula,” meaning that it obscures light.

From Forbes

One reason we have not had this proposal insisted upon before is that the data back of it are mostly new—the Orion variables have been only recently discovered and studied, the distribution and content of the dark nebulæ are hardly as yet generally known.

From Project Gutenberg

When the star blazed up, the illumination travelled from point to point of this dark nebula and lighted it up; but the size of the nebula was so vast that, although the light was travelling with the enormous velocity of 200,000 miles per second, it was not until months afterwards that it reached different portions of this nebula; and we accordingly got news of the existence of this nebula some months after the news reached us of the central conflagration, whatever it was.When did it all happen?

From Project Gutenberg