Showerthought: People keep calling the Orion Nebula a 'galaxy' and it drives me nuts

I see it all the time in comments on photos here. Someone posts a great shot of M42, the Orion Nebula, and a reply says 'wow, what a beautiful galaxy'. It's not a galaxy. It's a nebula, a stellar nursery inside our own Milky Way. A galaxy is a collection of billions of stars. This matters because it shows a basic misunderstanding of what we're looking at. I learned this the hard way when I first got my Celestron 6SE and pointed it at Orion. I told my buddy we were looking at another galaxy, and he corrected me on the spot. It's a cloud of gas and dust where stars are being born, not an island universe. So, what's the best way to explain this difference to new folks without sounding like a jerk?

2 comments

2 Comments

diana64110d ago

Ugh, that's like calling a city a whole country.

sullivan.abby10d ago

Wait, they actually said that?