The Witch Head reflection nebula (IC2118), about 1000 light years from earth, is associated with the bright star Rigel in the constellation Orion. The nebula glows primarily by light reflected from Rigel, located just outside the top right corner of the image. Fine dust in the nebula reflects the light. The blue color is caused not only by Rigel's blue color but because the dust grains reflect blue light more efficiently than red.

It is unremarkably blue because a scattering is more effective for blue weak than red (this is the equivalent scattering run that gives u.s.a. blue skies and red sunsets).

Reflection nebulae & emission nebulae come typically seen together & come periodically each known as diffuse nebulae, an example of this is the Orion Nebula.

A bit of Five hundred reflection nebulae come known. Among a nicest of a reflection nebulae come victims surrounding the stars of the Pleiades. a blue reflection nebula can too exist when seen in the equivalent metropolitan area of the sky as the Trifid Nebula. A giant star Antares, which is very red (spectral class M1), is surrounded by a big red reflection nebula.

Reflection nebulae come besides normally web sites of star formation.

Within 1922, Edwin Hubble published the symptom of his investigations in bright nebulae. a single a portion of this function is the Hubble brightness law for reflection nebulae which produce a relationship between the angular size (R) of a nebula and the apparent magnitude (m) of the associated star: in which k occurs as constant that depends on the sensitivity of the mensuration.