If the Orion Nebula was only 4 light years away.

I figured ATS would enjoy this. Amazing right?! Sure gives you an idea of how huge it really is.

What I find neat is that there are probably celestial bodies out there that actually see this view.


For those interested, here's some info on the Orion Nebula.

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2000 times the mass of the Sun.

Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula. The Orion Nebula is part of a much larger nebula that is known as the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

The youngest and brightest stars we now see in the Orion Nebula are thought to be less than 300,000 years old,[38] and the brightest may be only 10,000 years in age. Within about 100,000 years, most of the gas and dust will be ejected. The remains will form a young open cluster, a cluster of bright, young stars surrounded by wispy filaments from the former cloud. Wikipedia

We did get a rather mundane view didn't we?

Ty for posting

What's the temperature of the Orion Nebula? Too hot for Earth to safely get close to? Just seems it. S + F

originally posted by: Iamthatbish
We did get a rather mundane view didn't we?

Ty for posting

If that were our view, we would consider a black sky full of stars to be spectacular. Just a matter of what we've seen all our lives.

It would be interesting how differently human history would have progressed, seeing as how all ancient cultures relied on the night sky.

Thanks for the background of dreams tonight

Not to get all existential, but this just shows how small and insignificant we really are.

Pretty neat. But I find that I cannot really examine it or imagine what it would be like because the image is moving too fast and it loops over and over. Is there a pause button lol? Still cool, I just have a hard time putting myself there because real skies dont rapidly zoom in on a loop every 1.5 seconds Thanks for sharing. I did enjoy seeing the different distances (unkess that was meant to show the actual expansion of the nebula over time). I think I woukd like one of the smaller ones better than the huge one dominating the entire sky. Maybe at certain times of the year we would still see the night sky when we are facing the other way and the nebula would dominate the daytime sky, or at some times of the year it would be half and half.