NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) featured a striking image of Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula on November 9, 2026. The photograph, captured by Piotr Czerski and credited to the agency, highlights a blue nebula in the constellation Orion that has gained its popular nickname for resembling a Halloween-style caricature of a witch’s head.
Known scientifically as IC 2118, the nebula spans approximately 50 light-years across and is composed of gas and dust. According to the APOD explanation, the nebula’s structure indicates it has been partly eroded by the nearby star Rigel, one of the brightest stars in the Orion constellation. In the featured image, Rigel is positioned just below the center of the frame.
The distinct blue coloration of the Witch Head Nebula is attributed to two primary factors. First, the intense blue starlight emitted by Rigel illuminates the surrounding gas. Second, the dust grains within the nebula scatter blue light more efficiently than red light. This physical process is identical to the mechanism that causes Earth’s daytime sky to appear blue, although on Earth, the scattering is performed by nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere rather than interstellar dust.
The image was part of the daily series produced by the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in collaboration with the NASA Science Activation and Michigan Technological University. The explanation for the November 9 entry was authored and edited by Robert Nemiroff, Jerry Bonnell, Cecilia Chirenti, and Keighley Rockcliffe.
Following this feature, the APOD archive indicated that the next day’s image would focus on Saturn, continuing the agency’s daily effort to showcase different aspects of the universe through professional astronomical photography and commentary.
<small>Source: NASA — read the original story there.</small>
