Orion's fireplace: New image of the Flame Nebula

Orion offers you a spectacular firework display to celebrate the holiday season and the new year with this new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). But no need to worry, this iconic constellation is neither exploding nor burning. The "fire" you see in this holiday postcard is Orion's Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured in radio waves—an image that undoubtedly does justice to the nebula's name! It was taken with the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), located on the cold Chajnantor Plateau in Chile's Atacama Desert.