Strange thing in the Orion Nebula

[daniel l.]

What the heck is that?

[kookoo_gr]

Jokes aside can you provide a link with the full resolution of the image? Is it yours? Since i am an astrophotographer and have many hours of astrophotography under my belt with various problems and challenges that an astrophotography has i can give you a few suggestions.

1) bad calibration of the image, not likely since the picture would have many errors not one.

2) bad preorcessing of the image (stacking of images and noise removal algorithms)

3) something bad happened during the proccesing of the image

4) The most likely scenario is that it is a geostationary sattelite track that did not go away during preprosseing/processing of the image. The area of orion's belt has many geostationary satellites and i have captured myself some in my early days of astrophotography at M42 and at the horsehead nembula (actually at the horsehead nebula there is a satelite that passes at the same time, good thing that i can get rid off it at preproccesing)

5) if it is not yours someone may have painted a line at the image which is also very likely since the image is of high quality capture and proccesing and would not justify that error

said image with satelite track at the right

Edited July 4, 2015 by kookoo_gr

[Albert VDS]

It obviously has bee tampered with, just a strike of the pencil tool in any paint program.

Here's the original from hubblesite.org:

This is a newer one from NASA

Edited July 4, 2015 by Albert VDS

[LordFerret]

Latest information I've been reading, is that the 'Pillars of Creation' would be more aptly named the 'Pillars of Destruction'. There is speculation that the pillars, in fact all of the Eagle nebula, have been destroyed ... the image/light of such just hasn't reached us yet.

Just a few of the many links out there on the subject...

http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/events/department-news/1626/hubble-goes-high-definition-to-revisit-iconic-pillars-of-creation/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/01/06/pillars-of-creation-destroyed/#.VZf_7fkQI_A

[Albert VDS]

It's possible that they don't exist anymore, but the name wouldn't change.

They are named that way because they are in the process of creating stars, at least the moment we can see.

[Camacha]

It's possible that they don't exist anymore, but the name wouldn't change.

The name would not change anyway.

[Albert VDS]

The name would not change anyway.

Isn't that what I said?

[cantab]

The first question with anything like that is "real or artefact". The Orion Nebula is one of the most photographed deep sky objects, and indeed it's easy to find other images that don't show it, so we can conclude it's some sort of artefact. Considering other copies of the same image minus the smudge have been found I suspect a deliberate hoax though an accidental corruption isn't entirely implausible.