Astr110 Photography Projects, Spring 2005

Orion Nebula, Ruth Ribeiro

The constellation of Orion has been in our eyes and in our vocabulary for as long as time can tell. We presently get its name from the Greek myth about the hunter Orion who boasted he was the best hunter in the world. He can now equally boast that he posses one of the closest and maybe the best nebula in our night sky

The Orion nebula is located in the sword of the hunter Orion that is visible in the early winter night sky in the northern hemisphere. It is about 1,500 light years away and formed about 300,000 years ago. It is basically a gigantic cloud of gases and dust speckled and heated by young hot stars. It is the closest stellar nursery, with a large number of growing stars. The Orion nebula is debatably one of the most important things in our visible sky because it has provided much of what we know today about the formation of stars within nebulae of this sort. Not only do we find newly born stars, but we have come to believe we are also seeing the formation of solar systems much like ours around these newly formed stars.

The image shown has a size of 6.1 light years.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1994/24/

http://www.coldwater.k12.mi.us/lms/planetarium/myth/orion.html

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/phot-20-04.html