Posted on 11/03/2021 4:05:04 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright emission nebula. Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will surely alter its appearance. The emission nebula's orange color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen atoms. Toward the lower left of the image is the Flame Nebula, an orange-tinged nebula that also contains intricate filaments of dark dust. Two prominent reflection nebulas are visible: round IC 432 on the far left, and blue NGC 2023 just to the lower left of the Horsehead nebula. Each glows primarily by reflecting the light of their central star.
For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
bttt
How is it that Mr. Ayoub gets to claim copyright for an image taken with billions of dollars of equipment paid for by US taxpayers while Ayoub was presumably funded/paid/salaried with NASA?
After museums and on-line stores make a “profit” by selling reprints of this lovely image, I wonder what the proportion of profit is that might go to Mr. Ayoub as compared to whatever comes back to taxpayers (haha).
You don’t really appreciate how big in the sky the Horsehead is until you try to see it in a telescope. It’s quite large and you have to use your lowest powers to get it to fit in the field of view. A H-Beta filter helps a lot too.
Looks like NASA reposted his image from another website. They didn’t take the photo.
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