Both photos by Donald Collins
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is the Orion Nebula photographed through a 3-1/2 inch Questar telescope
on Jan 11, 2004 at the Warren Wilson Physics Department. The
photo consists of 9 15 sec exposures aligned and stacked. The
camera is a Canon A60 digital camerea. The Orion
Nebula is an emission nebula and a region of intense star
formation. In the center of the cloud lie several extremely hot
O-type stars which give off lots of invisible ultraviolet radiation in
addition to visible white light. The UV radiation is absorbed by
the huge clouds of gaseous hydrogen which then re-radiate it in the
visible regiion - similar to a fluorescent lamp. You can also see
dark structures in the clouds which are too dense for the light to
penetrate. For more information, see: http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m042.html |
Above
is the familiar Orion Constellation (The hunter) very prominent in the
southern skies in the early evening in February. Notice the belt
of 3 bright blue-white stars. Notice the very red bright star
Betelgeuse at the upper left in the photo and the blue-white star Rigel
in the lower right. The Orion Nebula (M42) is indicated with the
arrow - the middle region of the hunter's sword. The
constellation photo was obtained with the same digital camera with
about 4 - 15 sec images stacked together and further digitally enhanced
to emphasize the contrasting colors. Both photos by Donald Collins
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