Latest Orion Arm Stories
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have unveiled a new image of recently formed bright blue stars in the cluster NGC 2547. Astronomers using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the European Space Observatory's (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile took images of the stars while they were focusing in on the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). Despite the universe being roughly 13.8 billion years old, new stars and objects are...
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory The tangle of clouds and stars that lie in Orion's sword is showcased in a new, expansive view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Orion, the famous hunter, is visible in evening skies throughout the world from about December through April. The constellation appears tranquil and still to the naked eye, but lying in its sword, at what appears to be a slightly fuzzy star, is a turbulent cauldron of stellar birth. WISE scanned the...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A little over 400 years ago, French astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc first discovered the "fog" that is the Orion nebula. Located a mere 1,500 light years from our solar system, the Orion nebula is one of the great wonders of the night sky whose discovery is intimately associated with the early development of telescopes. Scientists have only realized the importance of the nebula in the last 60 years: the Orion nebula, like...
For decades, astronomers have been blind to what our galaxy, the Milky Way, really looks like. After all, we sit in the midst of it and can't step outside for a bird's eye view.Now, new images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are shedding light on the true structure of the Milky Way, revealing that it has just two major arms of stars instead of the four it was previously thought to possess."Spitzer has provided us with a starting point for rethinking the structure of the Milky...
NASA spacecraft are monitoring an interstellar wind coming from the constellation Ophiuchus.Science@NASA -- Every year in early December, something happens that can throw your horoscope out of whack. The sun enters Ophiuchus, the little-known 13th house of the zodiac. You've probably heard of Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius. The sun passes through these constellations, one by one, throughout the year. They're the ancient...
Latest Orion Arm Reference Libraries
Trifid Nebula -- Discovered by Charles Messier in 1764. Charles Messier discovered this object on June 5, 1764, and described it as a cluster of stars of 8th to 9th magnitude, enveloped in nebulosity. The Trifid Nebula M20 is famous for its three-lobed appearance. This may have caused William Herschel, who normally carefully avoided to number Messier's objects in his catalog, to assign four different numbers to parts of this nebula: H IV.41 (cataloged May 26, 1786) and H V.10, H V.11,...
Owl Nebula -- Dicovered by Pierre Mchain in 1781. The Owl Nebula M97 is one of the fainter objects in Messier's catalog, discovered by Pierre Mchain on February 16, 1781. In his description of this object, Charles Messier also mentions two other nebulous objects that he (and Mchain) have seen at about the same time, but which he had not added in his printed catalog version of 1781 (in the Connaissance des Temps for 1784). As the description is obvious and he added positions by...
Cone Nebula -- The Cone Nebula is a famous nebula in the Orion Arm surrounding the NGC 2264 star cluster. The 'cone' is a triangular dark nebula near the bottom of the nebula. The bright star at the centre of this picture is 15 Monocerotis (or 'S Monocerotis') - it is a quadruple star system consisting of four brilliant blue-white stars (classes O7, B7, B8 and A6) and it is partly responsible for causing the nebula to glow. The distance to the Cone Nebula is well-known, because it has...
