Saturday, December 30, 2006

ORION'S BELT

The three massive blue white stars, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, in the belt of the constellation Orion. This is how they might have looked about 1,500 years ago. The plate is a composite from shots taken between 1987 and 1991 by one of the telescopes at the Mt Palomar observatory and shot through a series of color filters.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Orion is one of the few star systems I can immediately spot when I'm star-gazing at my dad's farm....having a smoke and sometimes a Mike's Hard Lemonade.  I can mostly find the Dippers too....but there is so much visible out there in that area which is free of light pollution.  

Russ

Anonymous said...

I am going to miss being in a light-pollution-free area when I move from here.