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?

3 comments

3 Comments

diana6412mo ago

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

sullivan.abby2mo agoTop Commenter

Wait, they actually said that?

hollyramirez1d ago

Major facepalm moment right there. Like if someone told me Manhattan was the whole of New York state. Fr fr.