Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Infrared Orion from WISE

NASA ^ | January 19, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion is an intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image, an illusory-color four-panel mosaic taken in different bands of infrared light with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory, shows the Orion Nebula to be a bustling neighborhood or recently formed stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the stars of the Trapezium star cluster, seen near the center of the above wide field image. The orange glow surrounding the bright stars pictured here is their own starlight reflected by intricate dust filaments that cover much of the region. The current Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years.

[dr_lew]

Well, it’s labled “Processing and copyright Francesco Antonucci” . The ABOUT APOD page states that “APOD is originated, written, coordinated, and edited since 1995 by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell.”

Some of these APODs have been more “arty” than others, but their purpose is to educate and amuse the public, and I don’t think there is any sort of research quality standard they are subjected to. Maybe I’m just being picky, but I feel certain that the Jan 2015 APOD has some irregularities if considered as an objective representation, which as I say, I don’t believe is intended or required.