Posted on 04/02/2013 5:44:31 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: 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 above imaged molecular cloud complex is a reflection nebula cataloged as IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are actually made up of very fine dust 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, 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 on the upper right of the image center.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: Scott Rosen]
A.K.A. "the Godfather nebula"?
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Does your remote have an “oaf” button???
HeeChee. Furthermore the Berserker sayeth not.
On a hunch, for the Derby then:
1. Orb
2. Midnight Lucky
3. Dynamic Sky
Known in Europe as “Camilla”?
if it had antlers, it be just another moose head in space.
It's not lined up perfectly, but you should be able to pick up the correspondence between the images. The white lines to the right are part of the boundary of Scorpius.
Nu Scorpius does not appear to be the eye of the horse to me! I looks like it's on the bridge of the nose below the eye. That's why I started looking at the charts to be sure which star it was.
The nebulosity is not marked in Starry Night, but it is marked in my Second Edition SkyAtlas 2000.0 by Wil Tirion and Roger W. Sinnott, Deluxe Version. Nice to have.
Video of the Horsehead Nebula in visible & infrared, made to celebrate Hubbels 23rd anniversary:
http://www.space.com/20734-new-horsehead-nebula-image-shows-remarkable-depth-video.html
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