Astronomy Picture of the Day 10-07-03

NASA ^ | 10-07-03 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2003 October 7 The Colorful Horsehead Nebula Credit & Copyright: Jean-Charles Cuillandre (CFHT), Hawaiian Starlight, CFHT

Explanation: While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula. The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the bright emission nebula IC 434. The bright blue reflection nebula NGC 2023 is visible on the lower left. The prominent horse head portion of the nebula is really just part of a larger cloud of dust which can be seen extending toward the bottom of the picture. A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view with a small telescope, this gorgeous representative-color image was taken by the large 3.6-m Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, USA.

[petuniasevan]

When I had my 10-inch old beat-up Meade 'scope, I looked for the Horsehead many times. I saw it ONCE, with averted vision. It's a difficult object!

Right Ascension	05 : 40.9 (h:m)
Declination	-02 : 28 (deg:m)
Distance	1.6 (kly)
Apparent Dimension	6x4 (arc min)

This is the belt of Orion. See the Horsehead? (No, it's not my photo).

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[petuniasevan]

[Soaring Feather]

The head looks a little like a dragon head.!!

I like dragons. :-)

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

BTTT

[foolish-one]

One of these nights....

Thanks.

[firewalk]

Good morning
Thank you for the ping

[Prof Engineer]

STAR PING

[GATOR NAVY]

I couldn't figure out why it would be hard to find until I saw the last photo. That puts everything in perspective.

[sistergoldenhair]

Beautiful. Thanks.