Thursday, March 13, 2008

Orion Belt, Nebula Orion and Betelgeuse

The stars you see almost every night.

It's amazing how ignorant I was when I look at the night skies, staring at stars, twinkling, wondering why... and I left myself wondering.

I look at the stars in a very different perspective today. The common stars we all see almost every night, 3 stars in a row, if you take one step back and look at the surrounding stars, you'd see a big cross with Betelgeuse pronounced as Beetlejuice, (a red star, one of the biggest stars) at one end of the cross.

According to the big picture here, you can see the Orion Belt(3 stars in a row), and to the far right is
Betelgeuse
(It takes us 427 years, at the speed of light..to reach Betelgeuse and yet we see it so bright)


That's not it. Zoom in and you'll see the other 3 stars (shorter,smaller row) diagonally positioned to the left of the 3 Ori stars, is the:

The Great Orion Nebula
(also known as M42 or NCG 1976).


I don't have a telescope good enough to capture deep sky astrophotography, therefore I've picked one of my favourite astrophotographer - Humayun Qureshi

Will save for a new refractor telescope to take deep sky images!

Just so you know:
Exposure: 30 secs
ISO: 200

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

beetlejuice! beetlejuice! beetlejuice!

(sorry, i had to do it)