IC 2118: The Witch Head Nebula

Does this nebula query love the highest of a witch? The nebula is known popularly because the Witch Head Nebula as a outcome of, it is acknowledged, the nebula’s shape resembles a Halloween-kind sketch of a witch’s head. Exactly how, even though, is on the total a topic of imaginative hypothesis. What’s glaring is that IC 2118 is ready 50 light-years across and made of gas and dirt that components to — as a outcome of it has been partly eroded by — the nearby huge identify Rigel. Certainly one of many brighter stars within the constellation Orion, Rigel lies below the underside of the featured portray. The blue coloration of the Witch Head Nebula and is precipitated now now not most intriguing by Rigel’s intense blue starlight nevertheless for the explanation that mud grains scatter blue light more successfully than pink. The same bodily route of causes Earth’s daylight hours sky to seem blue, even even though the scatterers in planet Earth’s atmosphere are molecules of nitrogen and oxygen.