dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (11/25/85)
This the anniversary of the official discovery of the famous Orion Nebula. More -- after this. November 25 The Discovery of the Orion Nebula On today's date in the year 1611, a French naturalist discovered one of the greatest wonders of the heavens -- the Orion Nebula. You can rediscover this nebula for yourself in tonight's sky. In a dark sky, it looks like a fuzzy star -- and it's somewhat surprising that there's no mention of it in any known ancient or medieval record. It's also strange that Galileo never noticed it in his early telescopic tours of the night sky. The man who first reported spotting the nebula, Nicholas Peiresc, must have been observing late at night on this date -- since the Orion Nebula isn't high in the sky until about midnight or so. The nebula is easy to find in the constellation Orion -- and Orion itself is easy to find if you look in the south around midnight, for a short, straight row of three medium-bright stars. These stars represent the belt of Orion. Below the belt, you'll find Orion's sword -- a shorter line of what look like three fainter stars. One of these "stars" is the nebula. Ordinary binoculars show some of its haze -- plus one or more of the four famous stars known as the Trapezium that lie within the Orion Nebula. Most stars in our galaxy are billions of years old. But the stars in the Trapezium are relatively young -- born over the last few hundred thousand years from gas and dust in the nebula. The Orion Nebula is a vast cloud of gas and dust -- it's a place in our galaxy where many new stars are forming. Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin