IC 4592：蓝色马头反射星云
(原标题: IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula)
2023-09-26
浏览次数: 17
你看到马头了吗？你所看到的不是著名的朝向猎户座的马头星云，而是一个较暗的星云，只有在更深入的成像中才呈现出熟悉的形式。这张分子云复合体的主要部分是反射星云IC 4592。反射星云是由非常细小的尘埃组成的，通常看起来是黑色的，但当反射附近高能恒星的可见光时，它们看起来很蓝。在这种情况下，大部分反射光的来源是马眼中的一颗星星。那颗恒星是天蝎座Nu的一部分，是天蝎座（Scorpius）中较亮的恒星系统之一。第二个反射星云被命名为IC 4601，它围绕着图像中心上方和右侧的两颗恒星。
查看原文解释
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 above and to the right of the image center.
© Antoine & Dalia Grelin