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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."

4 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: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.

  3. 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."