Belt of Orion

March 17, 2007

Orion_belt

Provided by: Jens Hackmann
Summary authors & editors: Jens Hackmann, Jim Foster, Noah Newman

The photo above shows the glorious Belt of Orion (upper right center) and Great Nebula (right center) as observed on Christmas Eve from Weikersheim, in southern Germany.

What does it mean to REALLY watch the stars? And how could street- lamps make a difference in the way the sky looks?

Again this year, the GLOBE program is holding an astronomy event (March 8 to 21), where people from all over the world are encouraged to find the constellation of Orion in their night sky and report the amount of light pollution using an interactive tool as a guide. See theGlobe at Night Project page below to learn how to participate, or see yesterday's Earth Science Picture of the Day.

Photo details: unmodified Canon EOS 20D camera (unmodified), exposure time of the RGB frames was 6 x 10 minutes at 800 ISO, exposure time of the H-Alpha frames was 2 x 10 minutes at 1600 ISO. Thanks to Daniel Marquardt for hi sprocessing help.

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