Starry Critters

Intense Flames

by CritterKeeper on Jan.15, 2010, under Plants/Flowers

Credit: ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA.

What looks like a flame, or a cos­mic jel­ly­fish, is seen shoot­ing out of the rich star–form­ing region of the Flame Neb­ula. Also known as NGC 2024, the Flame Neb­ula shows a bright group of stars light­ing up the region with the core com­pletely hid­den behind a pil­lar of dust. Intense ultra­vi­o­let light and strong winds come from bright, new stars deep in the heart of the Flame Neb­ula. The ultra­vi­o­let light excites atoms inside the neb­ula caus­ing it to glow. Usu­ally we see great images like this from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope. This image comes to us from the giant, 4.1-meter VISTA tele­scope, the world’s largest sur­vey tele­scope.

Sim­i­lar to the Great Neb­ula in Orion, the Flame Neb­ula is an emis­sion neb­ula. And it’s found in the same part of the sky as the Orion Neb­ula. The bright star to the right is the blue super­giant Alni­tak. Also known as Zeta Ori­o­nis, Alni­tak is the left-most star, to north­ern hemi­sphere observers, in the belt of Orion.

Explore the image. Can you pick out the famil­iar Horse­head Neb­ula? You should be able to spot the ghostly out­line of the very famil­iar reflec­tion neb­ula in the lower left. It’s not how we usu­ally see it. The image was taken in vis­i­ble light to near-infrared. Near-infrared is just below what the human eye can see.

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