Flame of Orion

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

A flame burns in the Belt of Orion in this image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Sur­vey Explorer.

Explore the vast swath of sky cov­ered in this image. It takes light nine years for a beam of light to cross the sprawl­ing neb­ula. From Horse­head Neb­ula near the bot­tom to Orion B, WISE shows us the vast glow­ing gas of the area near the Orion Neb­ula. What shapes and sto­ries can you tell about the Flame Neb­ula? Per­haps you see a flower or a jel­ly­fish. Leave a com­ment below.

Although astronomers on Earth called it the Flame Neb­ula, the neb­ula glows because of the bright light of Alti­nak, bright blue star just to the right of cen­ter in the image. Alti­nak is the east­ern­most star in the Belt of Orion. WISE’s infrared eyes see clearly the dust warmed by Altinak’s sear­ing radi­a­tion. The radi­a­tion com­ing from the star also heats the gas of the Flame Neb­ula, also known as Orion B or NGC 2024, enough so it can be seen in vis­i­ble light.

Mov­ing down the col­umn of gas and dust, we come to a bright bub­ble in the mid­dle. This reflec­tion neb­ula is NGC 2023. The neb­ula is reflect­ing the vis­i­ble light from nearby stars. Just below this neb­ula is a faint bump in the col­umn of gas and dust. In vis­i­ble light, we know this bump as the dra­matic Horse­head Neb­ula. The Horse­head Nebula’s dense cloud blocks all light shin­ing from stars behind it, high­light­ing the well known shape in sil­hou­ette. But WISE sees the glow of the entire cloud.

The Flame Neb­ula, NGC 2023, and the Horse­head Neb­ula are located about 1,500 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Orion, the Hunter.

WISE launched in Decem­ber 2009 to study aster­oids, cool stars and the universe’s most lumi­nous galaxies.