Horsehead and Flame Nebulae

Horsehead and Flame Nebulae — nebula, explore its interactive 3D model in Cosmoscope.

Explore Horsehead and Flame Nebulae in an interactive 3D view of space. Inspect its astronomical data and the observations or reconstructions behind the model.

The famous dark horse’s head is a pillar of cold dust in front of glowing hydrogen. To the north, past Alnitak in Orion’s Belt, the Flame Nebula glows around a cluster of newborn stars hidden in dust. From Earth’s side it matches the photograph; fly round it to see its 3D shape, which is a model.

Type

Dark nebula (Barnard 33) and star-forming nebula (NGC 2024) in the Orion B cloud

Distance

About 1,370 light-years

Horsehead

A pillar of dust about 3 light-years tall, seen against hydrogen (IC 434) lit by Sigma Orionis

Flame

Glowing gas round a cluster of newborn stars hidden in its dust

Shown here

Digitized Sky Survey 2 photograph, stars removed, on one continuous 3D volume of glowing gas and dark dust: from Earth it matches the photograph; Alnitak’s glare filled in smoothly

3D shape

Illustrative, after Habart et al. 2005, Abergel et al. 2024 and Bik et al. 2003: IC 434 a curved glowing wall, the Horsehead a solid pillar of dust about 3 light-years deep in front of it, the Flame a glowing cavity behind a lane of dust

Image credit

Digitized Sky Survey 2: STScI/NASA, Palomar Observatory/Caltech and UK Schmidt Telescope plates

Explore Horsehead and Flame Nebulae in 3D

Horsehead and Flame Nebulae is placed in three-dimensional space using catalogue coordinates and an adopted astronomical distance. Rotate and zoom to explore the model. Stellar surfaces, gas structure and dust depths may be reconstructed or illustrative, as described in its facts; this is not live imagery from a telescope.