Credit: Digitized Sky Survey, ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator Color Composite: Davide De Martin (Skyfactory)
Explanation: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, are the bright bluish stars from east to west (left to right) along the diagonal in this gorgeous cosmic vista. Otherwise known as the Belt of Orion, these three blue supergiant stars are hotter and much more massive than the Sun. They lie about 1,500 light-years away, born of Orion's well-studied interstellar clouds. In fact, clouds of gas and dust adrift in this region have intriguing and some surprisingly familiar shapes, including the dark Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula near Alnitak at the lower left. The famous Orion Nebula itself lies off the bottom of this star field that covers an impressive 4.4x3.5 degrees on the sky. The color picture was composited from digitized black and white photographic plates recorded through red and blue astronomical filters, with a computer synthesized green channel. The plates were taken using the Samuel Oschin Telescope, a wide-field survey instrument at Palomar Observatory, between 1987 and 1991.
5 comments:
Isn't the Universe pretty......
cyberkitten - the Universe is marvelous.
Here's how to remember which star is which. Think of a picture of a lamb fixed to the wall with two thumb tacks at the corners.
Piers Anthony wrote a novel with a central alien character called Melody of Mintaka.
Hey deacon! Thanks for stopping by my blog!
Did someone tell you bout the lamb and two thumb tacks or is that our own invention? Pretty clever. :-)
It's my own invention. I made it up on the spur of the moment when I read this post.
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