The Colorful Horsehead Nebula
Explanation:
While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar
dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to
assume a recognizable shape.
Fittingly named the
Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex
Orion Nebula.
The dark
molecular cloud, roughly 1,500
light years distant, is cataloged as
Barnard 33
and is visible only because its obscuring dust is
silhouetted against the bright
emission nebula IC 434.
The bright blue
reflection nebula
NGC 2023 is visible on the lower left.
The
prominent horse head
portion of the nebula is really just part of a
larger cloud of
dust which can be seen extending
toward the bottom of the picture.
A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view with a
small telescope, this gorgeous
representative-color image was taken by the large 3.6-m
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
in
Hawaii,
USA.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
