Here is a 3D picture with Aldebaran closer to us, the Hyades further away, and in the background the Taurus Molocular Cloud.
This is a pure RGB image. I've gathered Ha signal that I eventually decided to discard.
*
Aldebaran (Arabic: الدَّبَران, lit. 'The Follower')
It is unrelated to the Hyades, as it is located much closer to Earth (65 ly, 20 pc) and merely happens to lie along the same line of sight.
Aldebaran is a red giant, with a surface temperature of 3900 K, but its radius is about 45 times the Sun's, so it is over 400 times as luminous.
The HyadesAlso known as Caldwell 41, Collinder 50, or Melotte 25, it is the nearest open cluster. Located about 153 ly (47 parsecs) away from the Sun, it consists of a roughly spherical group of hundreds of stars sharing the same age (625 My), place of origin, chemical characteristics, and motion through space.
The five brightest member stars of the Hyades have consumed the hydrogen fuel at their cores and are now evolving into giant stars.
The Hyades Cluster is related to other stellar groups in the Sun's vicinity. Its age, metallicity, and proper motion coincide with those of the larger and more distant Praesepe Cluster, indicating a common origin. Another associate is the Hyades Stream, a large collection of scattered stars that also share a similar trajectory with the Hyades Cluster. Among the members of the Hyades Stream, the star Iota Horologii has recently been proposed as an escaped member of the primordial Hyades Cluster.
The Hyades are unrelated to two other nearby stellar groups, the Pleiades and the Ursa Major Stream, which are easily visible to the naked eye under clear dark skies.
Sh2-239Sh 2-239 is not a HII region but a reflection nebula and a collection of Herbig-Haro objects embedded in the dark cloud LDN 1551. The brightest part of Sh2-239 is catalogued as the Herbig-Haro object HH 102. It is located near the star T Tauri within the Taurus dark cloud complex (520 ly, 160 pc), which is inside the Gould belt, our local galactic neighbourhood.
I portrayed it
here with a longer focal.
Sh2-238Hind's nebula (NGC 1555, HH 155) is a Herbig-Haro nebula surrounding the young G5V class T Tauri (yes! the prototypical T Tauri!) triple variable star system.
I portrayed it
here with a longer focal.
NGC 1647It is an open cluster that contains nearly 90 stars and it lies at a distance of 550 pc. It is located behind the Taurus dark nebula complex, which is in turn approximately 160 pc away. The brightest main sequence stars are of spectral type B7. Its age is estimated to be 150 My.
(info excerpted from galaxymap.org and wikipedia)
Comments