Hubble Reveals Horsehead Nebula in Unprecedented Detail

As part of its 23rd birthday celebration the Hubble team have released this new image of the Horsehead Nebula viewed at near-infrared wavelengths .

Usually, the thick dust obscures the baby stars forming inside the Horsehead's distinctive pillar, but Hubble's infrared imaging allows the hot stars cocooned inside to be seen. Also, the nebula's outermost 'edge' appears to glow as it is illuminated by a nearby hot star.
news.discovery.com...

Click for full image ...


1,500 light-years away and you could almost touch it

This video zooms into part of the sky in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), showing the new infrared Hubble observations of the Horsehead Nebula (otherwise known as Barnard 33). The video ends on a 3D fly-through of the nebula.

I think the quality of the image is stunning and a testament to Hubble one of Mankind's Greatest achievements

The Herschel Space Telescope also has a image of it also:-

www.bbc.co.uk...

Originally posted by alldaylong
The Herschel Space Telescope also has a image of it also:-

www.bbc.co.uk...

edit on 19-4-2013 by alldaylong because: (no reason given)

Great pic.

There's no way there's room for life out there.

reply to post by gortex


pic and vid is simply MAJESTIC

reply to post by gortex


That is just beautiful beyond words. How does that dust or cloud cover stay put?

reply to post by gortex


Astounding! And yet I still can get my head around the idea of an infinite amount of planets out there...drives me crazy to think that you could fly in one direction forever...absolutely astounding...and frustrating....

reply to post by antar


Hi antar
That's a good question and to be honest I don't know , I suspect maybe over time they will change shape but with our short lifetimes we don't see it .... Maybe

reply to post by chrismarco


It is impossible to get your head round it mate , Its just to big a concept and place , not sure I accept the infinity argument though , I once heard a mathematician say that Infinity was a mathematicians was of saying I give up .

Ive been looking at the pic in close up and you can see other Galaxies in it too

I'm just glad something other than a Boston thread made it to the front page. No offense, Boston was very sad

reply to post by antar


The sheer size of a nebula mostly prevents us from noticing changes within a human lifetime. This page is a nice place to begin to learn about them.

some great cgi work there.
i wonder what it really looks like.

Nebula clouds can stretch for light years, LIGHT YEARS in size, fairly mind bending.

reply to post by gortex

The vid makes it seem you can see the nebula with a good pair of binoculars. Can it be seen with an average telescope (for some reason I never realized it was just to the right of the "bottom" star on Orion's belt).

reply to post by Aleister


One a clear night with a good pair of binoculars it looks like a dullish green blob, still though something different none the less to look at.

If you really want, a good 500 dollar telescope will let you see it, looks like a large winged ethereal cloud, pretty smart.

Absolutely beautiful. Infinity is a hard concept to wrap your head around, but at the same time it does seem to leave less questions, at least to me anyway. The biggest problem I've always had with a finite universe is that everything that exists is always part of a larger system. If the universe was limited in that sense, wouldn't it have to exist within a larger structure?

Absolutely amazing!

In an attempt to grasp the sizes we are looking at...





The Horsehead Nebula alone is just about 5 light years tall.

Originally posted by Tuttle
reply to post by Aleister

 

One a clear night with a good pair of binoculars it looks like a dullish green blob, still though something different none the less to look at.

If you really want, a good 500 dollar telescope will let you see it, looks like a large winged ethereal cloud, pretty smart.

That's the Orion Nebula you are talking about you wont see the Horsehead Nebula with Binoculars

In the image below Horsehead Nebula on the left, Orion Nebula on the right!

This Hubble image has been integrated with image data from VISTA telescope into a wider view: apod.nasa.gov...



This is my new desktop wallpaper.