Starship Asterisk*

Sweet looking angel BAMAONE23! :P
Orin

The beauty is in what you see in the image too. If you look at it you will see an angel in it. NGC2170 is the right wing, vdB 69 is the left wing, vdB 68 is the dress, the emission nebula in the middle is the body (heart) and the small reflection nebula in the center top is the halo, (resting over a circle of stars) as the head.

Generally, bluish nebula surrounding bright stars are relfection nebula. This is starlight reflecting from dust particles in space, with the size of the dust particles small enough that they preferentially reflect blue light (very much like smoke particles do). The three bluish/blue-green nebula containing bright stars, forming a sort of distorted, inverted triangle in the image are reflection nebula. NGC 2170 is the upper-left-most of these three.

There's actually a fourth, tiny reflection nebula just above and to the right of NGC 2170, as well.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0608/ngc2170_seip_f56lbl.jpg

Hello.
I need help understanding this picture.
It says:"In this beautiful celestial still life composed with a cosmic brush, dusty nebula NGC 2170 shines at the upper left. Reflecting the light of [b]nearby hot stars[/b], NGC 2170 is joined by [b]other bluish reflection nebulae [/b]and a compact red emission region against a backdrop of stars. Like the common household items still life painters often choose for their subjects, the clouds of gas, dust, and hot stars pictured here are also commonly found in this setting - a massive, star-forming molecular cloud in the constellation Monoceros. The giant molecular cloud, Mon R2, is impressively close, estimated to be only 2,400 light-years or so away. At that distance, this canvas would be about 15 light-years across.

I bolded the two objects I fail to identify which is which.
Thank you.