AstronomyPicture of the Day—20181107

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2018 November 7

IC4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula

ImageCredit & Copyright: Mario Cogo

Explanation:Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horseheadnebula toward Orion but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiarform with deeper imaging. The main part of the here imaged molecular cloudcomplex is a reflection nebula cataloged as IC 4592. Reflection nebulas areactually made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can lookquite 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, one of the brighter star systems toward theconstellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). A second reflection nebula dubbed IC4601 is visible surrounding two stars to the right of the image center.