4/10/2003: Flame nebula

[Undertoad]

Thanks to Elspode who sends along another great astro pic. He notes: "The 2 Micron All Sky Survey has been completed, and the images are stunning. With this infrared survey, you can see a lot more detail in familiar objects due to the ability of infrared to penetrate through dust layers, both in the universe and in the objects themselves. Wonderful online site presents the whole catalogue of images...awesome. And all of them are Earth based. Not even Hubble performs this well in IR."

I'll say. It's ANOTHER beaut! The link notes that the above is the flame nebula, the below is the horsehead nebula.

The wife is interested in buying some of the Hubble prints, which can be bought for a pretty decent price, printed on photographic paper. I love them but I wonder if, after 20 years, we're going to have so much more vision of the universe that they'll seem very dated. Just like Apollo-era images today. You realize the importance of them, but they remind you just as much that they are from a different era. The state-of-the-art of their day, certainly, but even in that short amount of time, we've gone past that now.

Source: http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/ga.../Flame_Neb.jpg