How well do you know the night sky?
OK, but how well can you identify famous sky objects in a
very deep image?
Either way, here is a test: see if you can find some well-known
night-sky icons
in a deep image filled with filaments of normally faint
dust and gas.
This image
contains the
Pleiades star cluster,
Barnard's Loop,
Orion Nebula,
Aldebaran,
Betelgeuse,
Witch Head Nebula,
Eridanus Loop, and the
California Nebula.
To find their real locations,
here is an annotated image version.
The reason this
task might be difficult is similar to
the reason it is initially hard to identify familiar
constellations
in a very
dark sky:
the tapestry of our night sky has an extremely deep
hidden complexity.
The
featured composite
reveals some of
this complexity in a 16 hours of sky exposure in dark skies over
Granada,
Spain.