The Orion Nebula, seen through the Millennium Telescope

Last night I saw the Orion Nebula through the 30-inch Millennium Telescope for the first time. I was totally blown away.

The Millennium Telescope saw "First Light" and had it's official opening in the autumn of 2009, the International Year of Astronomy. While there is still some work to be done on the telescope to make it ready for use by the public, we have been able to test the capability of the telescope in a "Newtonian" configuration - with the eyepiece at the top end. This set-up entails some precarious footing on a temporary platform at the end of what will be the main viewing deck, but it does allow us a viewing window of about 20-40 degrees off the horizon. Fortunately, this region of sky includes the beautiful Orion Nebula, as well as the path of the ecliptic, which all the planets follow throughout the year.

The Orion Nebula, M42 (number 42 in Charles Messier's catalogue published in 1771), is a nebula over 1,300 lightyears away. It is a great mass of gas and dust in which stars are being created. Some of these stars may be obscured from view by the very clouds in which they are born, but the heat and light they produce will eventually push the material of these clouds away, allowing us to see them. What we can see of the nebula through a standard telescope is that gas and dust which is illuminated by the newborn stars. These facts make it a stunning object in even a small telescope or a large pair of binoculars.

I have seen the Orion Nebula many times through my own telescope, a 4-inch Maksutov-Cassegrain, in which it appears at ~50x magnification as a diffuse pale white cloud surrounding a small cluster of stars. In large binoculars on a good night, the wider field of view gives a grand impression of the full extent of the bright nebula and gives some idea of the darker dusty regions. (I can highly recommend the Celestron SkyMaster range for their optical quality if you want something more portable than a telescope, though I'd suggest investing in a sturdy tripod too, as the 25x70s are fairly hefty.)

I struggled to contain my envy a few years ago when I was stuck at university and several other members of the group were passing e-mails around about having a go at Orion through the 30-inch. Especially so when the city lights of Manchester (my university town) made anything other than the Moon and bright planets a struggle in a small telescope. So I was very pleased last night when, after doing some more tree-work around the observatory site, someone suggested the weather was probably clear enough to use the 30-inch. Given the clear image we had of a slim 2 day old moon and Jupiter from the courtyard through a 4-inch refractor, we thought it would be stupid not to have a go.

Having carefully followed the set up procedure for the 30-inch, draining the framework, opening the optics and unveiling the primary mirror, I helped Christopher (HCO Director) to slew the telescope round to Orion by sighting along the main tube before he centred it in the eyepiece. Being "on target" was signalled by an "ah, yes" from the platform, which sounded somewhat understated considering what I saw when I got up to the eyepiece myself.

 A 30-inch primary mirror gathers a lot of light. What this means for images observed through a telescope with a primary that size is lots of contrast. The Orion Nebula comes out almost in technicolor, with glorious blue jewel-like stars nestled in rolling clouds of pale green, surrounded by abyssally black dust. It was like looking at an image from the Hubble Space Telescope. It was much dimmer, I should think, than what could be displayed on a computer screen, but it was so much more fulfilling to be observing the nebula directly.

The fact that we could see such a complex structure as the Orion Nebula in as much detail as the Millennium Telescope permits, unaided by photographic equipment, fills me with hope for what HCO is trying to acheive. I think it is a vital aim of our project that we demonstrate to our visitors that the universe is not just a collection of computer images; it is important that we demonstrate that the universe, our universe, is three-dimensional and real.

I once looked at the Moon through a telescope and had an overwhelming sense that it was somehow within reach, the craters being like a mountain range within, oh, just a few hours by car. I had this same sense last night looking at the Orion Nebula, which despite being 10 billion times further away than the Moon, felt almost as achievable a destination. If we can look out into the sky and see for ourselves those distant mountains and clouds, if we can appreciate what those things are in their nature and what they tell us about the cosmos, I think we can get a better sense of our place amongst them.

I hope that in the future stargazing evenings we will run with the Millennium Telescope we will inspire others to explore more. It is through the exploration of our world, and all the challenges that that entails, that we discover what we ourselves are made of.

Leo Huckvale, HCO Webmaster

7th March 2011