Alnitak - The Death Star (DavidLJ)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Orion (Ori) · Contains: Horsehead nebula · IC 431 · IC 432 · IC 434 · IC 435 · NGC 2023 · NGC 2024 · The star Alnitak (ζOri) · The star σOri

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Alnitak - The Death Star

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Alnitak - The Death Star

The largest brightest star in this 2 panel moaic is Alnitak, the eastern-most of the three stars of Orion's belt. It looks like just one star but it is really a hot blue supergiant with two very close companions.

Below Alnitak is the Flame Nebula which is an emission nebula of glowing gas. The glow is caused by the blast of ultraviolet light coming from Alnitak. This bright nebula is partly shielded from our view by foreground colder non-glowing gas and dust which creates the branching structure effect. Inside, but hidden from view in this image, is a cluster of hot young stars many of which have circumstellar discs.

Leading away upwards and to the right is IC 434, a large red emission nebula of glowing hydrogen gas. It is reacting to the ultraviolet light being blasted out by Sigma Orionis (see below). Silhouetted in front of the red nebula is the famous dark Horsehead Nebula. This is a region of colder gas and dust and is also a nursery for newly born stars. Although named for its supposed likeness to a horse's head, some see it as looking more like a dragon or a dinosaur or even Disney's Big Bad Wolf !

At the top is Sigma Orionis. Like Alnitak this is a multiple star system with 5 members all being contained within what looks like a single star in this image. It is quite young being only a few million years old.

To a casual viewer all of these objects seem to lie together in the night sky. But in reality they are quite far apart. The closest is Alnitak being a “mere” 390 light years away. Then, at more than twice that distance, comes Sigma Orionis at 1,000 light years. The Flame Nebula is 1,350 light years and the Horsehead and IC 434 are the farthest at 1,500 light years.

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	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
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This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
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Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	902170
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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Alnitak - The Death Star

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