IC 4592: The Blue
Horsehead Reflection Nebula
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 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.
Image Credit & Copyright: Scott Rosen