Hidden Treasure Within the Orion Nebula

By Nancy Atkinson - January 19, 2011 at 8:50 AM UTC | Stars
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This dreamy look inside the Orion Nebula is the latest "Hidden Treasure" released by the European South Observatory, part of its contest for amateurs to sift through the mountain of data ESO has generated with their telescopes and create new images from old data. The data used for this image were selected by Igor Chekalin from Russia, and this was the seventh highest ranked entry in the competition; a

nother of Igor's images was the eventual overall winner.

The image is a composite of several exposures taken through a total of five different filters with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory, Chile.

The Orion Nebula, also known as Messier 42, is a huge complex of gas and dust where massive stars are forming and is the closest such region to the Earth. The glowing gas is so bright that it can be seen with the unaided eye and is a fascinating sight through a telescope. Despite its familiarity and closeness there is still much to learn about this stellar nursery. It was only in 2007, for instance, that the nebula was shown to be closer to us than previously thought: 1,350 light-years, rather than about 1,500 light-years.

The data was originally used to find that the faint red dwarfs in the star cluster associated with the glowing gas radiate much more light than had previously been thought. But the data had not been made into a color image, until now.

ESO's Hidden Treasures 2010 astrophotography competition

was created for anyone who enjoys making beautiful images of the night sky using real astronomical data.

Source:

ESO

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com