Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Great Orion Nebula M42

NASA ^ | November 04, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion, also known as M42, is one of the most famous nebulas in the sky. The star forming region's glowing gas clouds and hot young stars are on the right in this sharp and colorful image that includes the bluish reflection nebulae NGC 1977 and friends on the left. Located at the edge of an otherwise invisible giant molecular cloud complex, these eye-catching nebulas represent only a small fraction of this galactic neighborhood's wealth of interstellar material. Within the well-studied stellar nursery, astronomers have also identified what appear to be numerous infant planetary systems. The gorgeous skyscape spans nearly two degrees or about 45 light-years at the Orion Nebula's estimated distance of 1,500 light-years.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit and Copyright: Terry Hancock (Down Under Observatory)]

[SunkenCiv]

http://129.164.179.22/apod/image/1511/OrionNebula_Hancock_960.jpg

http://129.164.179.22/apod/image/1511/OrionNebula_Hancock_4028.jpg

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[C19fan]

I was up in the Smoke Mountains area a few weeks ago. We were driving over some foothills at night and I pulled over because I heard this area was one of the better dark sky areas. I was able to see Orion’s Nebula with my astronomical binoculars. It was just a fuzzy patch but it was very exciting. The Pleiades were gorgeous through the binoculars. For someone who lived in the NE Corridor and out in the West Coast with light polluted skies seeing these objects and the some semblance of the Milky Way was very exciting.

[Red Badger]

If you look at that pic in full res, it’s vaguely pornographic..............

[Red Badger]

A friend of a friend of mine has an amateur observatory near there. I’ve seen pictures of his setup and it’s very professional looking. He gets some great views, especially during the winter when the skies are clear.

My friend will go there for the Great Solar Eclipse that will pass diagonally across the US in 2017. More details and map of totality here:

http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/path_through_the_US.htm

[Red Badger]

http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/solar_eclipses/TSE_2017_GoogleMapFull.html

[Comment Not Approved]

My best friend ran a company where one of the co-owners was into making telescopes. At company meetings they would polish this big glass disc by pushing it back and forth, rotate and repeat, on some bed full of polishing compound. Took quite awhile to get it just right.

Then the guy had it mirror coated and mounted it into a tube used to pour concrete, it was about 2ft diameter. They built a stand to hold it in and mounted an eyepiece at the upper end. This thing was about 16 feet long and you had to stand on a ladder to look through the eyepiece.

The had it trained on Orion’s Nebula when I got my chance to look through it. Never gonna forget how that looked, just like todays’ APOD.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks RB.