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  • Stargazing News - February 18th, 2025

    From CJ@21:2/156 to All on Mon Feb 17 06:57:21 2025
    Tuesday, February 18, 2025

    The Spectacular Orion Nebula (overnight)

    The bright stars of mighty Orion, the Hunter, shine in the southern sky on mid-February evenings. The sword of Orion, which covers an area of 1.5 by 1 degrees (about the end of your thumb held up at arm's length), descends from Orion's three-starred belt. The patch of light in the middle of the sword is the spectacular and bright nebula known as the Orion Nebula or Messier 42 and NGC 1976. While simple binoculars will reveal the fuzzy nature of this object, medium-to-large aperture telescopes (green circle) will show a complex pattern of veil-like gas and dark dust lanes and the Trapezium Cluster, a tight clump of young stars that formed inside the nebula. Adding an Oxygen-III or
    broadband nebula filter will reveal even more details. The nebula and the
    stars forming within it are approximately 1,350 light-years from the sun, in the Orion arm of our Milky Way galaxy.

    (Data courtesy of Starry Night)
    --- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
    * Origin: CJ's Place, Orange City FL > cjsplace.thruhere.net (21:2/156)