moon phases

Stellar Rorschach Test

The Trifid Nebula
The Triffid Nebula is named for its three lobed appearance. It is almost seven thousand light years away toward the galactic center in Sagittarius and is almost fifty light years across. In our sky it is actually almost the size of the full moon. This nebula has both red and blue sections within it. The blue color is due to light from very hot stars reflecting off of dust grains in the nebula. The red color is from hydrogen gas within the nebula being ionized by those very same hot stars. Like many bright nebula seen in the sky, the Triffid is the scene of recent and continuing star birth. It is designated M-20 as being the twentieth object in a list of objects first put together by Charles Messier.
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The North American Nebula
From Canada to the southern tip of Mexico this nebula is a dead-ringer for the North American continent. It is an unusually large (about three times the size of the moon!) but faint nebula located in Cygnus, several degrees east of Deneb - the brightest star in that constellation. Deneb is also the star that lights up the nebula. Both star and nebula are only about seventy light years away.
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The Swan Nebula
The Swan Nebula, also known as M-17, is found 5,700 light years away in Sagittarius. It is a large cloud of gas and dust seventy-five light years in diameter. (The distance to the nearest star to us is only 4.3 light years).The young stars that light up this nebula are hidden behind the glowing gas.
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The Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula is a dark molecular cloud about 1500 light years away. It is called a dark nebula because it does not receive the same illumination from near-by stars that bright nebulosities do. It is very close to the easternmost star in Orion’s belt. In fact, that star ionizes the gas behind the Horsehead, making it glow red and silhouetting the Horsehead. The Horsehead is part of the large molecular cloud that encompasses much of the constellation of Orion. The very bright stars that make up the constellation were formed only in the last ten million years from dark molecular clouds such as the Horsehead.
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