Welcome to http://www.handsonuniverse.org/activities/Explorations/StarBirthRegions/

New stars are born from clouds of gas and dust.  The Orion Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula are two examples.

The Orion Nebula Open up M42__10s.fts. Need Instructions?

Flip horizontally.  Click on log. North is up, and East is to the left, as it is when you face South and look at Orion in the sky (Northern Hemisphere Point of View).

 

The Lagoon Nebula Open up M8__25s.fts. This is the Lagoon Nebula in the Constellation Sagittarius.

Flip horizontally.  Click on log. Compare this image to the photograph on page 1583 of Burnham's Celestial Handbook by Robert Burnham, Jr. New York: Dover, 1978.

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More activities with images of M42 and M8.

Open M42__10s.fts and   M42__20s.fts.   Compare the number of stars you can see at the two exposure times, 10 seconds and 20 seconds.  What is the advantage of a longer exposure time?  Are there any disadvantages to a longer exposure time?

Compare M8c__25s.fts to the images of M42.  What is the same and what is different about these two nebulae?  How would you recognize a nebula in a telescope? 

** HOU Educators:  Download images of M42 and M8. 
M42 images and M8 images were taken at Yerkes Observatory with the SBIG ST-7 CCD camera on the 24 inch reflector using a focal reducer and a green filter (M42 by Vivian Hoette; M8 by Sharon Carr and Kevin McCarron).

01/28/2000

* HOU™ Explorations *