NGC 2024: Flame Nebula

  The Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) - based on Chandra X-Ray and Spitzer Infrared images. Image source: [1]

  The Flame Nebula, also known as the Christmas Tree Nebula, is a gas and dust region, obscured in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that includes the famed Horsehead Nebula, located at 1,500 light-years away from the Solar System. This nebula is easy to locate given that it is very close to the bright star that is further to the left in the Orion belt: Alnitak. This star sends energetic light to the Flame Nebula, which causes electrons to be released from the hydrogen gas that resides there. Much of the glow occurs when electrons and ionized hydrogen are recombined.  

  The X-ray data of the Chandra Observatory and the infrared images of the Spitzer Space Telescope allow to penetrate in the shining gas and in the clouds of darkening dust of the site, reveal many stars of the newly formed cluster NGC 2024, of between 200,000 years and 1, 5 million years old. X-ray and infrared data also indicate that the youngest stars are concentrated near the middle of the cluster. This is the opposite of what is predicted by the simpler models of star formation in a nursery, according to which star formation begins in the densest center and expands progressively to the edges leaving the stars older, not the youngest , in the center of NGC 2024.  

  Christopher Stobiecki 

  Sparkling at the edge of a giant cloud of gas and dust, the Flame Nebula, also referred to as NGC 2024, is in fact the hideout of a cluster of young, blue, massive stars, whose light sets the gas ablaze. Image source: [2]

  This spectacular visible light wide-field view of part of the famous belt of the great celestial hunter Orion shows the region of the sky around the Flame Nebula. Image source: [3]

  This VISTA image shows the spectacular star-forming region known as the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings. Image source: [4]

  This is the Horsehead and Flame nebula. It was created using 1.5 hours worth of exposure time with an H-alpha filter. Image source: [5]

  In the image shown, a dark band of interstellar absorbent dust cuts its silhouette against the bright hydrogen (in the image on the right) in the background and, in fact, conceals the true energy source of the Flame Nebula . Image source: [6]

  djxatlanta