Starry Night This Week

Each week most PBS stations air "Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer", the world's first and only weekly TV series on naked-eye astronomy. The Starry Night images on this page illustrate the show for the week of Monday January 13, 2003. You can view the complete show script, or watch a RealPlayer video of the show.

How to See Something 20,000 Times The Size Of Our Solar System With Just The Naked Eye

Easily visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch in the middle of Orion’s sword. What we call the Orion Nebula is just the central part of a larger cloud that stretches across several hundred light years. Four bright stars in a parallogram near the nebula’s centre form the Trapezium. These hot young stars heat up the surrounding gas clouds, causing the nebula to emit light. This view shows the sky on the week of January 13th at 9:00 PM, as seen from mid-northern latitudes.

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Click here for an archive of the past shows.