Stunning picture of the blue horse head nebula

The number of stunning space pictures has gone through the roof in past years, but every once in a while we come across some which just leave you breathless – such is the case with the Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula – do you see the horse head?

Not to be mistaken with the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, this is rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the above imaged molecular cloud complex is a reflection nebula cataloged as IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are actually made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the light of energetic nearby stars.

Via NASA.