Universe Today
Aww, how cute! What an adorable little... nebula?
Although here it may look like it could fit in your hand, the Horsehead Nebula is obviously quite a bit larger - about 1.5 light-years across from "nose" to "mane." But given a
tilt-shift
effect by Imgur.com user
ScienceLlama
, the entire structure takes on the appearance of something tiny -- based purely on our eyes' natural depth-of-field when peering at a small object close up. Usually done with Photoshop filters these days, it's a gimmick, yes... but it works!
The original image was captured in infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope and
released in April 2013
, in celebration of its 23rd anniversary.
Check out more of ScienceLlama's "tiny universe" images below:
[caption id="attachment_107022" align="aligncenter" width="579"]
A tiny Centaurus A[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_107023" align="aligncenter" width="580"]
A tiny Crab Nebula (see original NASA image
here
)[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_107024" align="aligncenter" width="576"]
A tiny Andromeda Galaxy in hydrogen alpha (see original
here
)[/caption]
See these and more on ScienceLlama's Imgur page here
, and follow Science Llama on Twitter
here
.
(H/T to Google+ user Brian Koberlein and fellow Space Community member Warren Isaac. Featured on Reddit.com.)
ADDITION 12/17:
Several of these images (like
this one
) were originally processed by Robert Gendler from Hubble-acquired data, but the attribution was not noted by ScienceLlama. I apologize for the oversight -- see more of Robert's beautiful astrophotography
on his website here.
Another original source was
Adam Block of the Mount Lemmon Sky Center.