Discover the cosmos!
Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2026 April 7
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
here-imaged
molecular cloud complex is
reflection nebula
IC 4592.
Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine
dust that normally appears dark but can
look quite blue when reflecting the
visible 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 just below the image center.
The featured picture was taken from
Sawda Natheel in
Qatar.