Astr111 Photography Projects, Fall 2005

NGC 1977 , Aaron Vande Kamp

The Nebula NGC 1977, is located right above the Orion nebula, and is visible to the unaided eye as a blurry patch of blue in the famous sword of Orion. The above picture captures a part of the Nebula that reflects light from bright Orion Stars. The nebula appears blue because of the blue light that reflects from the neighboring stars and is reflected through the dust that the stars are surrounded by. There is also a dark spot near the lower right of the nebula that is dark because the stars there are not reflecting the light through the space dust. So they are silhouetted in this picture.

In the image itself you can see a few of the stars that make up the sword of Orion, and you can clearly see the bluish tint that the nebula leaves. This is different from most other nebulas because most of the rest are red in color, not blue. The Nebula is approximately 1460 light years away and has a linear size of 4.17 light years and an angular size of 589.8 arcseconds.

References:
http://www.machunter.org/hap_ngc1977_d.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010722.html

http://www.seds.org/~spider/ngc/ngc.cgi?1977