Astronomy Picture of the Day—20190104

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2019 January 4

The Orion Nebula in Infrared from WISE

Image Credit: WISE, IRSA, NASA; Processing & Copyright : Francesco Antonucci

Explanation:The Great Nebula in Orion is an intriguing place. Visible to the unaided eye,it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But thisimage, an illusory-color four-panel mosaic taken in different bands of infraredlight with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory, shows the Orion Nebula to be abustling neighborhood of recently formed stars, hot gas, and dark dust. Thepower behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the stars of the Trapezium starcluster, seen near the center of the featured image. The orange glowsurrounding the bright stars pictured here is their own starlight reflected byintricate dust filaments that cover much of the region. The current OrionNebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperseover the next 100,000 years.