Orion Nebula Gets New Milepost Marker, Now Closer

twilight30 writes "Discovery News is reporting that 'One of the most famous and scrutinized heavenly objects is 10 to 20 percent closer than we thought, say two teams of radio astronomers who have made some of the most precise cosmic distance measurements ever, with a telescope nearly as big as Earth. The Orion Nebula is the closest major stellar nursery to Earth, so it has been heavily studied to learn about the lives of stars. Its distance from Earth, however, has long been a matter of uncertainty, with an estimate made about 25 years ago in need of revision.'"

Comments

"a telescope nearly as big as Earth"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nothing. They needed a computer nearly the size of Jupiter to process the data.

Re:"a telescope nearly as big as Earth"

[opus]

The VLBA was aimed at one of the few radio-wave emitting stars in Orion, which was viewed twice in a single a year. The almost 200-million-mile width of Earth's orbit around the sun allowed the VLBA to serve as one eye, then again as the other eye six months later.

Wouldn't that be a telescope 200-million-miles wide, using the same poetic license that led them to say they used a telescope as big as the earth.

Re:"a telescope nearly as big as Earth"

[glavenoid]

Wrong again. The 2 points, ~200 million miles apart were used as points in a measure of parallax. The virtual aperture of the VLBA scope is ~5000 miles diameter, which isn't *quite* "nearly as big as earth". Still a pretty big aperture, even though it's not a complete circular area, the resolution provided is apparently sufficient to measure the stellar (nebular?) parallax wrt M42.

What I find more interesting in this article is the close relationship alluded to between the trapezium and the nebula...

Re:question:

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

Or maybe the nebula is just moving 20% closer every six months!

Fortunately it will get caught in Xeno's paradox.

Expanding Universe...

[CODiNE]

Let's just wait a little longer and we won't have to reprint all those textbooks.

Re:question:

[servognome]

but if the Orion Nebula is undergoing rapid beta expansion, the measurements would be invalid. I don't know of any way to correct for this phenomenon...

Release it and figure it out in Service Pack 1.

Telescope warning

[autophile]

Warning: Objects in telescope are closer than they appear.

--Rob

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

>One of the most famous and scrutinized heavenly objects is 10 to 20 percent closer than we thought

In other words, Natalie Portman moved from Boston to New York.

Re:..with a telescope _AS BIG AS the EARTH" ?

[jnik]

Actually, we've been doing it for a decade.

Re:Closer than we thought...

[jamesh]

Hmmm... 10 to 20 percent closer in 25 years... (gets out calculator)... that means that it will be here in 125 to 250 years!!!

I for one welcome our invading Orion Nebula overlords.