dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (01/11/85)
With just your naked eye, you can see the famous Orion Nebula. More -- after this. January 11 The Orion Nebula Orion the hunter is now located high in the south each evening. The prominent belt of Orion consists of three medium-bright stars in a short, straight row. On either side of the belt are two very bright stars -- one red and one blue -- called Betelgeuse and Rigel. Orion also has a sword -- a line of stars hanging from the belt. And in the middle of the sword, there's a famous object that can be seen with just the naked eye. It's the famous Orion Nebula -- a great cloud of gas in space where new stars are being born. The Orion Nebula looks like a fuzzy star to the naked eye. But this object is really some 20 thousand times greater in extent than our entire solar system. It's located nearly two thousand light-years away -- and may be about 30 light-years across. Within this great cloud in space, there may be enough material to make 10 thousand stars like our sun. The Orion Nebula glows with the energy of some of the stars inside it. No one knows when these stars began to shine -- but they are very young -- no more than a few million years old -- and maybe only tens of thousands of years old. Recently, it was suggested that these stars may have "turned on" less than four centuries ago -- based on the fact that no one seems to have noticed the Orion Nebula before the early 1600s. In any case, the Orion Nebula is definitely noticeable now -- so, especially if you have a star chart, try to take a look! Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin