Skip to main content

IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula • 09/26/23

Posted by Specola Profile 09/26/23 at 12:16PM Science - Tech - Astronomy See more by Specola

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex is reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the visible 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, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars above and to the right of the image center.

Photo by Antoine & Dalia Grelin

Powered by Volunteers | 360-794-7959

Read more from Pepe's Painting LLC

Giving Kids in Need the Chance to Read
  Non-profit organization - Seattle, WA

Click the Image to learn more about us

Hunger impacts all of us | 360-435-1631

Snohomish, Skagit and Island County