APOD 4.4

This strange phenomena was captured in this image, which combines infrared exposures from the Hale Telescope on Mt. Palomar in California and the the Keck-2 Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. MWC 922, a hot star system, is imbedded in the nebula. The cones, which incorporate at near right angles, may have been caused by the emission of cones of gas from stars in the late developmental stage. Astronomers hypothesize that the cones would actually appear as a ringlike structure if viewed from another viewing angle, similar to what was observed during the supernova back in 1987. The truh is that no one really knows why the structure appears this way.