Spooky 'cosmic bat' spotted soaring through deep space for Halloween. A ghostly figure has been spotted swooping through the night sky — just in time for Halloween. Astronomers have captured what looks like a giant bat flying across the cosmos. The eerie sight was photographed over Chile by the Very Large Telescope's Survey Telescope. Its ultra-wide lens revealed a glowing cloud of gas and dust shaped like a bat mid-flight. Floating 10,000 light-years away, between the constellations Circinus and Norma, the “Cosmic Bat” stretches across a patch of sky four times wider than the full Moon. But this spooky creature isn't hunting — it's giving birth. Inside the nebula, new stars are forming, heating hydrogen gas until it shines bright red. Dark filaments weave through the cloud, forming what looks like the bat's skeleton. Its haunting wings belong to two star-forming regions: RCW 94 and RCW 95. Captured with the 268-megapixel OmegaCAM, the image shows the telescope's stunning power.