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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 Scorpius. A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars on the far right.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: reflection nebula
Publications with words: reflection nebula
See also:
- APOD: 2026 April 7 Á IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula
- APOD: 2026 February 2 Á Orion: The Running Man Nebula
- NGC 1333: Stellar Nursery in Perseus
- APOD: 2026 January 28 Á M78: Reflecting Blue in a Sea of Red
- NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula
- APOD: 2025 September 19 Á The NGC 6914 Complex
- Reflections on VdB 31