A Nebula For Halloween

Posted on 30 October 2008 by

Here’s an astro-image for the holiday: the Witch Head Nebula lit up by blue supergiant Rigel. The Star Shadows Remote Observatory has a really nifty version on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site. Just to give some perspective, this interstellar cloud is about fifty light-years long, about the distance from here to the central stars of the Big Dipper. It would take the New Horizons probe to Pluto (the fastest probe ever launched by humans) about a million years to traverse the Witch Head chin to crown.

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About catholicsensibility

Todd and his family live in Ames, Iowa. He serves a Catholic parish of both Iowa State students and town residents.
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2 Responses to A Nebula For Halloween

  1. Fran says:
    31 October 2008 at 8:45 pm

    I love when you post these things. I am taking a grad course on the sacraments and we started by looking at the cosmos as the primary sacrament.

    One of our first assignments was to spend time with google sky.

    Reply
  2. Anne says:
    1 November 2008 at 9:41 am

    I see Abraham Lincoln!

    Reply

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