Yesterday, the Universe just got a little bit more accessible: about 57% of the WISE mission’s infrared data of the sky has been released and can be searched online. Instructions on how to tap into that archive are available as well.

WISE mapped the entire sky in the infrared and found a treasure trove of fantastic objects (see Related Posts at the bottom of this post). As part of the news of this data release, NASA put up an image I hadn’t seen before, and it’s really amazing: the Lambda Orionis Nebula:

[Click to ennebulanate, but do it with care: the high-res version is a whopping 15,800 by 14,700 pixels and weighs in at 25 MB!]

It may look entirely alien, but you’ve probably seen this part of the sky before. See that blue star in the lower left? That’s Betelgeuse! Marking Orion’s shoulder, Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, destined one day to go supernova. It looks blue in this image because WISE sees in the infrared, and uses false colors. What’s colored blue in the image is actually light at a wavelength ...