Thursday, February 26, 2009

orion nebula.

It is difficult for my humble imagination to even believe this exists. This is the Orion Nebula – or M42 – one of the most dramatic, studied and photographed objects in the night sky. It can be seen with the naked eye as the star in the middle of Orion's sword (the three stars located below Orion's belt). With a decent pair of binoculars or a telescope, the nebula can more clearly be seen (as opposed to being just a fuzzy dot to the unaided eye).

This image is a composite of fifteen images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, and is one of the most detailed astronomical images ever captured. At one point I felt my insignificance climbing mountains. This is on an entirely different, much larger and difficult to comprehend scale of which I am still and will always be processing.

2 comments:

Mark said...

Fantastic image, I can't imagine what it would be like to sit off the edge of that thing for real and just watch it.... I guess it probably doesn't have any real "motion"? Though in my head I think I approximate it to clouds and the movement we see on our small blue planet ;) Its the only metaphor I have to work with.

thom said...

Of course it moves – it's just gas afterall (mostly hydrogen I believe). So you're closer than you think with your earthly metaphor.