The Orion Nebula is a bright winter jewel --so bright that it can be seen with the naked eye! I remember the first time I noticed it too. I was 9 years old and the Apollo space program was in full swing. My mind was full of strange and wonderful alien places all due to the ongoing space race. Unfortunately, I mistook this beautiful object for a fuzzy star.
It's easy to dismiss the brightest nebula in the northern sky. It does look like a faint fuzzy star and it does need dark skies to be seen by the naked eye. It's what happens when you look at it through binoculars and telescopes that makes it come alive. This huge interstellar nursery is giving birth to new stars as I write this piece. Distant suns are forming out of tenuous dust and gas, slowly coming together through gravity until the mass builds up. Eventually, when enough of it comes together, nuclear fusion starts and a sun blazes into being. Boom! Wow!
You can see the Orion Nebula even in moderately light-polluted skies. If you can't find it with only your eyes, try a pair of binoculars. This gem shows up a great amount of detail through even modest telescopes. Sorry but aside from the planets of our solar system, most of the stuff you will see in our skies will be in black and white. We're talking about very small amounts of light here. That being said, when I'm doing a public viewing with the Durham Region Astronomical Association people's comments usually range from "cool" to "holy smokes" to "absolutely incredible!". My family gives it a thumbs up even though they think I'm a little over the top on this -which I am.
To find the Orion Nebula first look in the south after dark. Orion is one of the few constellations that actually seems to be what it is describing. Orion is the mighty hunter and does look somewhat like a stick-figure human. You will see "Orion's Belt", three stars lined up neatly in a row. Just a little below the leftmost of the three will be a fuzzy object often referred to as "Orion's Sword". That's the Orion Nebula!
The sky chart is done in a great planetarium program called "Starry Night"
(c) Image made with Starry Night Software - www.starrynight.com
Orion Photo Credit: NASA and C.R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University), STSci (Hubble Space Telescope)
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