Inside the Flame Nebula

The Flame Nebula is a stand out in optical images of the dusty, crowded star forming regions toward Orion’s belt and the easternmost belt star Alnitak, a mere 1,400 light-years away. Alnitak is the bright star at the right edge of this infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. About 15 light-years across, the infrared view takes you inside the nebula’s glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds though. It reveals many stars of the recently formed, embedded cluster NGC 2024 concentrated near the center. The stars of NGC 2024 range in age from 200,000 years to 1.5 million years young. In fact, data indicate that the youngest stars are concentrated near the middle of the Flame Nebula cluster. That’s the opposite of the simplest models of star formation for a stellar nursery that predict star formation begins in the denser center of a molecular cloud core. The result requires a more complex model for star formation inside the Flame Nebula. via NASA https://ift.tt/2OVichM

Wikipedia article of the day for April 17, 2021

Wikipedia article of the day is Yugoslav destroyer Zagreb. Check it out: Article-Link Summary: Zagreb was the second of three Beograd-class destroyers built for the Royal Yugoslav Navy. She was designed to be deployed as part of a division led by the flotilla leader Dubrovnik. The first warship built in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Zagreb entered service in August 1939, was armed with a main battery of four 120 mm (4.7 in) guns in single mounts, and had a top speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph). Yugoslavia entered World War II due to the German-led Axis invasion in April 1941. During the invasion, two of her officers scuttled her at the Bay of Kotor on 17 April 1941 to prevent her capture by Italian forces and were both killed by the explosion of the scuttling charges. A French film was made in 1967 about her demise and the deaths of the two officers. In 1973, on the thirtieth anniversary of the formation of the Yugoslav Navy, both men were posthumously awarded the Order of the People’s Hero by President Josip Tito. (This article is part of a featured topic: Ships of the Royal Yugoslav Navy.)