Vista Telescope's Infrared View Orion Nebula Enhanced 3

This is very likely the finest, most detailed image of the Orion Nebula in the world. This image has not been upsized. It is a very large file with... more

by L Brown

Title

Vista Telescope's Infrared View Orion Nebula Enhanced 3

Artist

L Brown

Medium

Photograph - Mixed Media

Description

This is very likely the finest, most detailed image of the Orion Nebula in the world. This image has not been upsized. It is a very large file with very high resolution.
This wide-field view of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), lying about 1350 light-years from Earth, was taken with the VISTA infrared survey telescope at the European Southern Observatory�s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The new telescopes huge field of view allows the whole nebula and its surroundings to be imaged in a single picture and its infrared vision also means that it can peer deep into the normally hidden dusty regions and reveal the curious antics of the very active young stars buried there. This image was created from images taken through Z, J and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. The exposure times were ten minutes per filter. The image covers a region of sky about one degree by 1.5 degrees.
The European Southern Observatory (ESO, formally the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere; Observatoire europ austral in French) is a 15-nation intergovernmental research organization for astronomy. Created in 1962, ESO has provided astronomers with state-of-the-art research facilities and access to the southern sky. The organization employs about 730 staff members and receives annual member state contributions of approximately 143 million. Its observatories are located in northern Chile.
ESO has built and operated some of the largest and most technologically-advanced telescopes in the world. These include the New Technology Telescope (NTT) (which pioneered active optics technology) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which consists of four 8-metre-class telescopes and four 1.8-metre auxiliary telescopes. Ongoing ESO projects include the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).
The nebula is visible with the naked eye even from areas affected by some light pollution. It is seen as the middle "star" in the sword of Orion, which are the three stars located south of Orion's Belt. The star appears fuzzy to sharp-eyed observers, and the nebulosity is obvious through binoculars or a small telescope. The peak surface brightness of the central region is about 17 Mag/arcsec and the outer bluish glow has a peak surface brightness of 21.3 Mag/arcsec.
The Orion Nebula contains a very young open cluster, known as the Trapezium due to the asterism of its primary four stars. Two of these can be resolved into their component binary systems on nights with good seeing, giving a total of six stars. The stars of the Trapezium, along with many other stars, are still in their early years. The Trapezium may be a component of the much larger Orion Nebula Cluster, an association of about 2,000 stars within a diameter of 20 light years. Two million years ago this cluster may have been the home of the runaway stars AE Aurigae, 53 Arietis, and Mu Columbae, which are currently moving away from the nebula at velocities greater than 100 km/s.
Coloration
Observers have long noted a distinctive greenish tint to the nebula, in addition to regions of red and of blue-violet. The red hue is a result of the Hecombination line radiation at a wavelength of 656.3 nm. The blue-violet coloration is the reflected radiation from the massive O-class stars at the core of the nebula.
The green hue was a puzzle for astronomers in the early part of the 20th century because none of the known spectral lines at that time could explain it. There was some speculation that the lines were caused by a new element, and the name "nebulium" was coined for this mysterious material. With better understanding of atomic physics, however, it was later determined that the green spectrum was caused by a low-probability electron transition in doubly ionized oxygen, a so-called "forbidden transition". This radiation was all but impossible to reproduce in the laboratory because it depended on the quiescent and nearly collision-free environment found in deep space.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/VISTA%27s_infrared_view_of_the_Orion_Nebula.jpg

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April 21st, 2014