Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] toward Orion but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the above imaged [
http://www.robgendl…] molecular cloud [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] complex is a reflection nebula [
http://en.wikipedia…] cataloged as IC 4592 [
http://aisig.sdaa.o…]. Reflection nebulas are actually made up of very fine dust [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii [
http://en.wikipedia…], one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of Scorpius [
http://www.astro.ui…]. A second reflection nebula [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars on the far right.
Explanation
Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] toward Orion but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the above imaged [
http://www.robgendl…] molecular cloud [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] complex is a reflection nebula [
http://en.wikipedia…] cataloged as IC 4592 [
http://aisig.sdaa.o…]. Reflection nebulas are actually made up of very fine dust [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii [
http://en.wikipedia…], one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of Scorpius [
http://www.astro.ui…]. A second reflection nebula [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars on the far right.
Explanation
