Spotting New Born Solar Systems
in Orion?
Distance 1344 Light Years
Inside the Orion Nebula is a treasure trove of stellar nursery delights including; bow shocks (like the one around LL Ori and iX Ori and in the “baby Orion Nebula” M43), Herbig-Haro objects and if we’re really lucky we might even be able to bag the birth of a solar system – a protoplanetary disc.
Here’s a link for an overview of all the crazy stuff we might reveal in our nearest star factory.
Below: one of the many Bow Shocks in Orion.
This is both a lucky imaging and regular target. I am encouraging folks to try and image this nebula in unusual wavelengths. For instance lucky imaging in IR might work well for protoplanetary discs (but I don’t know for sure). Regular imaging in IR might help reveal the bow shocks (again I don’t know if it will). In addition to the usual Ha, Oiii, Sii narrowband wavelengths I’m hoping to image with my Mg and Na 2nm filters which I’ve been using for solar work. The chances are it won’t produce anything surprising but this super bright target is an excellent place to try stuff out. Please feel free to experiment too.
Below :is it possible to reveal Orion’s protoplanetary discs from earth?
Download Regular Imager's reference frame
| Center (RA, Dec): | (83.938, -5.340) |
| Center (RA, hms): | 05h 35m 45.192s |
| Center (Dec, dms): | -05° 20′ 23.968″ |
| Size: | 2.89 x 2.89 deg |
| Radius: | 2.042 deg |
| Pixel scale: | 1.49 arcsec/pixel |
| Orientation: | Up is 166 degrees E of N |
Download Lucky Imager's reference frame
| Center (RA, Dec): | (83.832, -5.395) |
| Center (RA, hms): | 05h 35m 19.771s |
| Center (Dec, dms): | -05° 23′ 41.240″ |
| Size: | 25.7 x 25.7 arcmin |
| Radius: | 0.303 deg |
| Pixel scale: | 0.515 arcsec/pixel |
| Orientation: | Up is 0.194 degrees E of N |