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Clearest Photos Ever Of Horsehead Nebula

Posted by Hemos on from the looking-deeply-into-the-continium dept.

angkor writes "A new composite image created from high-res photographs. Wow, just wow. You can see it at SpaceFlightNow."

9 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. European Southern Observatory by edgrale · · Score: 5, Informative

    Can be found here, http://www.eso.org You can find the link there to the images, or you can use this direct link: http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/phot -02-02.html Have fun!

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    1. Re:European Southern Observatory by dy_dx · · Score: 5, Informative

      close... it's actually at http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2002/phot -02-02.html (no space in the uri). it sure does make for a good background at those higher resolutions though...as do a large archive that page points to: an "Astronomy Picture of the Day"

  2. Re:Wow!!! Beats the view from my 60mm refractor :- by at_18 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I doubt that you can see in your 60mm more than a vague hint of the nebula. It's usually a bitch to photograph with high contrast.

    About the exposure time, I'm sure that it wasn't too long. The VLT is composed of 4 telescopes, each with a 8.2 meters mirror. Most likely, only one of them was used, but even in this case, a few minutes would be enough to saturate the CCD :-)

  3. Re:Wow!!! Beats the view from my 60mm refractor :- by gjbivin · · Score: 2, Informative

    I tried to see it with a 10" f/5.5 reflector at a good dark site near Tucson, and only got vague hints that there was anything there. But I suspect that my visual dark sensitivity isn't as good as many. Your milage may vary.

  4. Re:very nice but... by at_18 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It must be enormous, but how enormous? Anyone?

    Using the Angular size calculator (beware: Excel xls file), given a distance of 1.700 light-years, and an apparent width of about 6 x 4 arc-minutes, we have that the nebula is roughly 3 x 2 light-years across.

    It doesn't sound much, but it's almost 30,000,000,000,000 kilometers tall, with a width of 20,000,000,000,000 kilometers. The 3rd dimension is not known, but probably on the same order of magnitude.

  5. Clearest photos? I don't think so by Seenhere · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Hubble Space Telescope imaged it last year. They ran an internet poll to pick a target for the Hubble to observe, and the Horsehead won (Cowboy Neal was second, maybe). The Hubble Heritage Project published the result (it's a composite with some ground-based images filling in the edges) and it is better than the VLT picture, IMHO. You can see it here , along with lots of information about how it was made, and high-res versions.

    --Seen

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    "I used to be a dilettante. Then I thought I'd try something else for a while."
  6. Re:Clearest photos? I DO think so by mybecq · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, I think ESO's is a clear winner.
    Compare ESO's version (largest is 4.6MB JPEG @ 1951x2366)
    and
    any on Hubble's page (wide @ 800x813, closeup @ 1000x800).

    NOAO has better images than Hubble's too, but they're also wide angle (but still really nice)...
    Hubble's MPEG movie animation is very cool though.

  7. Re:New picture of horse's arse. by J'raxis · · Score: 3, Informative

    Larger pics are available here. The largest is a 1951x2366-pixel JPEG. You'll have to crop some text off of the pic yourself to use it as a desktop, it appears.

    Remember, Google is your friend.

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    Liberty in your lifetime
  8. Re:Why does it look... by kindbud · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's exactly what it is, although "upper right" is northwest. Sigma Orionis, far outside the field of view of the camera, is the illuminating star. Most of the stars seen in the image are foreground objects seen hanging in front of the clouds behind them.

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