Astronomy Picture of the Day -- IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula

NASA ^ | April 02, 2013 | (see photo credit)

[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.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: Scott Rosen]

[SunkenCiv]

A.K.A. "the Godfather nebula"?

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[Chode]

blue horseshoe loves anacott steel...

[cripplecreek]

One I made this afternoon.

[bigheadfred]

Does your remote have an “oaf” button???

[bigheadfred]

A.K.A. "the Godfather nebula"?

HeeChee. Furthermore the Berserker sayeth not.

[Chode]

LOL

[mikrofon]

On a hunch, for the Derby then:

1. Orb
2. Midnight Lucky
3. Dynamic Sky

[Rebelbase]

Known in Europe as “Camilla”?

[NormsRevenge]

if it had antlers, it be just another moose head in space.

[dr_lew]

Here's an overlay with my Starry Night screen image. I moved my POV to Chile, where the target was just below the zenith looking north. So the field is upside down compared to the view to the south from the midlatitudes of the northern hemisphere. Of course, Starry Night adjusts the orientation of the label on Nu Scorpii.

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.

[P.O.E.]

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