04-2-2013, 09:00 AM
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#490
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Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: I live in the last place where you Look.
Age: 31
Posts: 7,376
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Re: Terry's Astronomy Thread.
What's in the sky tonight?
April 2, 2013
-As spring advances, wintry Orion tilts farther over as it declines in the west-southwest after dark. Orion's Belt in its middle is almost horizontal. Orion is brightly framed between Jupiter on its right and Sirius on its left.
-Last-quarter Moon tonight (exact at 12:37 a.m. Wednesday morning EDT).
Astro Picture of the Day:
April 2, 2013
Source
Do you see the horse's head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the above imaged molecular cloud complex is a reflection nebula cataloged as IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are actually made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of the Scorpion Scorpius. A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars on the upper right of the image center.
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