Physics Photo of the Week

Physics Photo of the Week February 21, 2025 The Horsehead Nebula (IC 434) - Photo by Don Collins - College View Observatory The Horsehead Nebula in Orion is a famous icon of deep sky astronomy for it's unusual well-fitting image of a horse.  It is also unusual in that it is a dark nebula -  a giant cloud of dust suspended in the cosmos - rather than a luminous nebula.  The size of the horse's head is about 7 light years across.  The head appears as an extension of a larger cloud of dust and molecules in the constellation Orion.   This color photo was obtained with the CCD camera on the College View Observatory telescope over a span of one week in late January, 2025.  The process involves taking about an hours' worth of pictures in one night for several nights during the week.  Each night would concentrate on a single filter eventually obtaining a stack of white light monochrome photos and a stack of each of the red, green, and blue filtered images...

  Physics Photo of the Week February 7, 2025 The Flame Nebula  (or the "Burning Bush") Astrophoto by Donald Collins - the College View Observatory   This is "The Flame Nebula" - an interstellar dark cloud surrounding by a glowing cloud.  I like to compare to the Burning Bush that is described in the Bible.  The burning bush in the Bible appeared to Moses - a bush on fire, but not burning up.  A perpetual flame.  This cosmic burning bush likewise is not burning up, but appears to last forever. Ancient stories aside, the cosmic flame is not the burning up of stars.  On the contrary, the "burning bush" trunk and branches are cosmic clouds of dust particles as well as hydrogen gas.  Stars are actually being formed deep inside the dark clouds.  The glowing cloud in the astrophoto above is about 6 light years across calculated from the field of view of the camera-telescope system (18 arc minutes) and the approximate distance of the nebula fro...