WISE Mantis

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

A green man­tis rises from this cloud of glow­ing gas in an image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Sur­vey Explorer.

Explore the col­or­ful image. What sto­ries and pat­terns do you see in this neb­ula? Leave a com­ment below.

IC 405, or the Flam­ing Star Neb­ula, fea­tures a run­away star rac­ing away from its orig­i­nal home. AE Auri­gae was likely born in the Trapez­ium Clus­ter, found deep within the heart of the Orion Neb­ula. It was part of a twin star sys­tem, called a binary star, with Mu Colum­bae. But about 2.5 mil­lion years ago, the pair col­lided with another binary sys­tem in the Trapez­ium Clus­ter. This col­li­sion sent both AE Auri­gae and Mu Colum­bae zip­ping through space in oppo­site direc­tions at more than 100 kilo­me­ters per second.

The strong wind from AE Auri­gae blow away elec­trons in the gas sur­round­ing the star. Sci­en­tists call this ion­ized gas and it glows, cre­at­ing an emis­sion neb­ula. The sear­ing heat of the star also warms the sur­round­ing dust caus­ing it to glow red in this image. We see this light reflected to our eyes. Astronomers call this a reflec­tion neb­ula. Because infrared light is invis­i­ble to our eyes, astronomers color the light in the image so we can study it bet­ter. Each color of light rep­re­sents a spe­cific wave­length of infrared light. The fuzzy blue spots are hot­ter stars.

IC 405 is found about 1,500 light years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Auriga the Char­i­o­teer.