Great Orion Nebula
Though it is difficult to come out in the winters to do star gazing, it’s worth doing so or rather you will regret missing out on the two beauties of the haven. The Orion constellation and Orion Nebula. The constellation itself is most picturesque, imagined as a giant hunter with a club and shield. But the most celebrated nebula of the northern hemisphere is located close to three belt star Alnitak Alnilam and Mintaka straddling the celestial equator. Slightly south of Alnilam is fuzzy star describing
tip of the sword of this great hunter. Ptolemy’s Almagest or Al Sufi’s The book of fixed stars did not mention this nebula. Before the invention of the telescope it was noted as an odd looking star, In the Mayan creation myth it is mentioned as smouldering amber in the middle of a triangular hearth defined by Rigel, Alnitak and Saiph. Surprisingly Galileo scanned the surrounding area with his telescope but missed the nebula. A. French astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, on November 26, 1610 discovered its nebulous nature. It is speculated that a star or two flared up within the nebula triggered an increase in the brightness so it becomes visible in historic times.
The Trapezium cluster within the Orion Nebula was first described by Jesuist mathematician astronomer John Baptist Cyset. Three stars of the cluster were first identified by Galileo. In 1659 Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens made three first detailed drawings of the Orion Nebula. In 1769 famous French Astronomers Charles Messier included it in his celebrated catalogue listing of non comets aka Messier catalogue as the 45th object the M45. The Orion Nebula appears about twice as large as the full moon and contains an enormous open cluster of stars having 2500 stars within 20 light years of each other.
The Orion Nebula, M45 looks good in any telescope even a 7X50 binocular will show the nebula glowing with white light emitted by the stars of Trapezium open cluster. A reflector telescope with at least an 8 inch mirror will show you its shape resembling an angel fish with four stars of trapezium close to dark bay like indentation popularly called ‘fish mouth’. Full glory of the Orion Nebula is displayed in the long exposer photographs with its surrounding nebulocity and other interesting nebulae. In fact the entire region of the Orion constellation is full of nebulous glow, astronomers call it the Orion molecular cloud complex. Apart from the M42 Great Orion Nebula other nebulae are M43, flame Nebula, Running man nebula, the Horsehead nebula etc. but most of these can be seen in the images captured by images captured by experts. In the past HST, Hubble space telescope has been able peep inside the M42 and showed young stars shrouded by cocoons of dust glowing dimly in infra red light. Some of these stars have their clocks blown by hot stellar winds of young hot stars and look like tadpoles are called proplids. The most stunning of these images is where we can see the dark proto planetary disk. Now the next and more powerful space telescope, the JWST, James Webb Space Telescope is exploring this molecular cloud complex for better data specifically to capture Star birth in the neighbouring constellation of the Taurus. And hit the jackpot with a stunning image of stellar birth. Wait when it peepers inside the Orion Nebula with its ‘dust busting’ infrared vision.
