What does a nebula look like up close?

[canadamonster]

the radiation would kill you when you leave earths atmosphere

[cobloaf1]

Is it similar to fog? As in, when you stand in thick fog, even though you're engulfed in it, your immediate surroundings appear to be "clear" however you can still see the fog outside of that area. Does that make sense?

[ARC1313]

where are these gasesous clouds located?

[ARC1313]

this guy is brillant way ahead of his time

[IbnShahid]

I could listen to this guy talk science all day. Why the hell weren't more of my school teachers like this??!!

[Kaminix]

Cool!

[mouseclick92]

First I must say I loved your book and I'm sad to have missed out on a lot of you tv-series.

But what I really wanted to know if you could see any nebulae with the "naked" eye? Because I have a feeling that in most sci-fis, they use a nebula to make the area more "interesting" and "beautifull".

So I guess my real question is: Is sci-fi's presentation of nebulae any realistic?

[artvandelay13]

I was wondering, what would a nebula look like close up -- not from inside, like you're talking about, but just close enough that you could see it with your naked eye and so it would fill up a reasonable amount of your field of vision. Obviously it wouldn't be all colourful like the images NASA puts out, which are, as you point out, artificially enhanced and coloured. So would nebulae basically look like those images but smaller, dimmer, and less colourful (but obviously still breathtaking)?

[SpiderCheese101]

Hello :)

I just found you like 2 minutes before this comment was made.

I'm eleven years old and LOVE atronemy.

I was wondering if you could correct me no matter how wrong/stupid statement I am about to make.

So a nebula is a cloud of gas and comes together and forms into a gas planet. If the gas planet is massive enough to pressurize the gases it will become a star right away. If the sun has enough energy it expands rapidly into a nova/supernova depending on its size.

[SpiderCheese101]

@SpiderCheese101 RAN OUT OF CHARACTERS:

If the star burns out of energy, it becomes a black hole.

anyways... If its a supernova/nova and becomes its remnant it will become a large magellentic cloud. (i dont know why please tell me why)

PLEASE CORRECT ME ON ANYTHING

[SpiderCheese101]

@SpiderCheese101 My science teacher told me that the sun will soon become a red giant.

and i read another thing about how it will become a planetery nebula i think.

IM SOO CONFUSED :(

[TheFemaleIcelander]

@SpiderCheese101 it will first become a red giant and then a planetery nebula and finally a black dwarf

[NDF211Gunner]

You can't see a nebula when your in it because for example, A rainbow. You can see it far away, but once you get closer and closer, it will fade because you are already inside of it, yet you don't know.

[maicocom]

@NDF211Gunner Bad example. Unlike a nebula, rainbows don't actually exist in a particular place, they are an illusion and the illusion changes or disappears as you move around. You can actually test this with a thin spray from a waterhose and the sun.

[NDF211Gunner]

@maicocom Your right, ive done that before, it is a bad example but I got my answer now

[daybreak4491]

kinda sucks man its better if we could see it the way we see it in the books but no so it sucks!

[nucleous001]

Is your name nebula

[dobbynfred072107]

Might be kind of a dumb question but how close can you be to a nebula before the light starts to dissipate? 1 lightyear? 2 lightyears? Just wondering.

[virus2547]

@dobbynfred072107 For example the Crab nebula has a diameter of 11 light years, assuming 90 degree field of view you'd have to be 5,5ly away to have that wide view. Of course if we assume spherical nebula that's also the radius so you're at the boundary of the nebula and wouldn't see all of it. Something like 13.5ly away with 45° fov should get you a nice image.

[plastikmaiden]

you remind me of freeman^^

[haloKINGSstudios]

@plastikmaiden Gordan Freeman!

[kush2121]

I would visit Scarlett Johansson too! Great taste in women, my friend.

[ttdantt10384]

My wifes nebula looks great from across the room, but when I get In close, I don't even wana eat it no more :(

[juniorjgc]

this is a cool vid

[tmcthree]

Wow, that means that we might be in a nebula, now, and not know it... right?

[fleebenworth]

Theoretically, yes. Many other stars similar in age and mass to the sun have been observed however, and they tend not to be in the middle of nebulae, so it is not likely that we are in one.

[bengacris]

@tmcthree no, because the Sun is there, I mean, its not a white dwarf, and whith our physics calculs, etc. We would know it ;)

[iophobon]

It always annoyed me when a Star Trek ship needed to hide and just flew into the nearest nebula. They have sensors that can detect ships light years away but as soon they enter a tenuous cloud of hydrogen all bets are off? Or even better, there are the episodes when environmental controls fail and the ship actually starts filling with an odd-colored opaque gas. Keep spreading the word, Phil!

[didjabringadidjalong]

hehe

or that they can detect the mass of planets or whatever far away, but not the mass of a cloacked ship...

[lejink]

or on the opening credits of voyager the ship goes through a gas cloud and the wake of gas pushed out of the way spirals behind the ship as if theres a low pressure area behind it.. that happens in atmosphere not in space :p

that always bugged me when i saw it

[Tokopol]

@iophobon Gene Roddenberry -- bless his heart -- was always more concerned with conveying an overall message than scientific realism. As a trekkie I've basically resolved myself to that, and it hasn't harmed my enjoyment of the show at all. Was the Mutara Nebula unrealistic? Probably. Who knows, maybe it was a condensed nebula or something. The crew calling something "pure energy" always got on my nerves too, but oh well.

[AustinStudios]

So is it posible that we live inside a nebula

[Germanboy567]

yep we very well could be inside a nebula.

[luckystrke]

nice vid :)

[ELIT3squir3l]

Quick get in the Enterprise. We're going to the Cat Eye Nebula :)

[johnsmdm]

Mintaka got the aliens man..

[GarredHATES]

I love your videos man

[PestVic]

hot from a far. FAR from hot. thats the same lesson applied. and it goes for girls you see walking hahaha

[acr08807]

hahaha. girls you see walking. hahaha. pestvic, you're a funny, funny guy.  hahaha

[PestVic]

haha thanks :-P

[Taraalcar]

Wouldn't it look cloudy and hazy inside a nebula, like you were in some sort of thin fog?

[snarf66]

Random questions? None of them have anything to do with the video. That's nice.

[alienmoonbase]

You are correct about the video. However, Phil in intellectually dishonest. He has made inexcusable statements that disparage legitimate UFO research.

He thinks lunar images of 1 pixel = 1000m are just great!

Meanwhile we are imaging, uh, what resolution on Mars? 2m?

Look into it. This guy is an educated fellow but for some reason seems to be a lunatic when it comes to what he thinks is acceptable imagery from the moon.

[snarf66]

If you're talking about Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, it has a worse resolution than MRO, but LRO will be orbiting closer to the Moon and have similar resolution to MRO. 1 pixel = 1000m isn't what he said. Uh, that's worse than what we have now. I've followed Bad Astronomy for a while, and don't recall him saying 1 pixel being 1000m is good.

[alienmoonbase]

I saw Phil speak earlier this year in Redding California. A gentleman asked him why the public has not yet been privy to low resolution images from the JAXA orbiter.

He said there was just sooo much information. and the Japanese would want to keep the images for about a year before they released any.

I'm not the only one who can't believe there are no decent images of the moon. Many ask but nobody answers.

[snarf66]

Wait until LRO arrives. We will see images as quickly as we see images from MRO. But they do have to sift through thousands of pictures. It's also JAXA's right to hold those images for as long as they want. It's a Japanese probe, and they'll want to analyse as much as they can themselves first. It's their data, so they can do as they wish with it first. Their scientists were given priority.

[alienmoonbase]

I hope you are right.

But, where are the images?

People on earth are rivaling the Indian images. Jaxa?

Where are the images?

I'd like to place a bet with you on the LRO images and when and if they will be available.

Doesn't it seem at least a little bit suspicious that there are no good images of the lunar surface?

[snarf66]

I guess you haven't seen the recent news about Kaguya. And give India a break, it's their first probe. And they have other things to worry about right now with the terrorism. LRO images will come out quickly, like MRO has. I would bet on it. Also, we haven't had any high quality cameras around the moon before. NASA's been concentrating on other planets.

[acr08807]

Not only that, snarff66, but, because they built it, they get first crack at the data. They'll probably want to examine the data before they release it. Their scientists come first.

[snarf66]

Exactly. I mentioned that earlier. Alienmoonbase doesn't seem to realise that since it is a Japanese probe, they get priority. The way people work in Japan, they tend to be meticulous and go through things thoroughly before releasing any information. But of course, they have been releasing HD videos from the data they've received. Just one of those movies would take a long time to make, considering it's composed of thousands of images, each of which need to be processed.

[BarronTD]

So do we know that we're not in a nebula right now?

[CreativeVisionary92]

@BarronTD actually Sol system is passing through a cloud of hydrogen-helium nebula called Local Interstellar Cloud... We don't see it but it's detectable through infrared telescopes. I think in 2200 or so our solar system will pass right through the edge of this cloud, through a million degree cloud of charged particles... but since our solar system is "protected" by Sol's magnetosphere no serious threat will occur.

[Noogymonster]

@BarronTD My question aswell. I suspect we look like Hydrogen.

[andromidius]

@BarronTD Interesting idea. I'm guessing (by my own logical deductions, admittedly) that we would know by careful observation. Space dust density, or maybe just looking further away and seeing if we can see the 'edge' of any nebula we may be inside. Though considering how large space is, what we see may not exist anymore! Though I suppose its certainly possible...

[sebastiansz]

@BarronTD "The Sun was actually FORMED from a nebula over 4 and a half billion years ago." Source: google -> "How old is the Sun? What will happen when the Sun turns into a nebula?"

[nikbookworm]

Its kinda similar to galaxies. We get beutiful portraits from observatories, but when we look up at our own milky way its just a hazy glow. :(

[BoringAaron]

If somebody can be in a nebula and not know it, then could WE be in a nebula and not know it?

[phototaker84]

I was thinking the same exact thing! that would be pretty crazy...although i think that we would be able to detect the gases. unless it is spread out too far.

[cryodragoon]

I don't think so. For one thing, he was talking about the visible aspect of a nebula. Nebulae are stars that are beginning to form, or results of a supernova, so if we were living inside a nebula, then surely we should've noticed something like gravity or an increase of frequency or density of certain elements in space. Moreover, if the nebula was a result of a supernova, then of course we'd have to see a remnant of a star somewhere close.

[jergsden]

Stars rock, nebulae suck.

[TheAmazingTurd]

I'm just like a nebula, prettier from far away than up close! lol

[WhiteJarrah]

"I'm so funny"

Yeah, it's funny how you keep dodging Operation Dirty Trick and the fact that Jim Lovell lied during the interrogations of the Kaysing/Lovell trial.

Care to tell us why you won't talk about this?

[windyshrimp]

Its funny how people like you bother Michael Shermer and Phil Plait with bogus bullcrap, though they already have more proof then plausible and yet you people still believe in that junk.

[daverocker1]

Thats what i like to think about my girlfriend.

[AtheistCitizen]

can we not 'handle' single light frequency or is it that we known the mix that is white so well that we can detect deviations, & are 'tuned' to it so well that deviations[typical fluorescent] are annoying?

[travellingtheworld]

Whats that book you have? looks interesting :D

[viperfang94]

This actually cleared up alot, Thanks!

[Fjarhultian]

That is FAIL. Thanks for the info, Phil.

[Melengell]

Thank you, Phil. I really enjoyed that video a lot. I like the educational ones, and you are a very good and easy to understand teacher. Good work!

[Stolichnaya9]

i know all this things but i love the way u explain it 00

nice video !

[Penfish2k]

That was a very cool lecture, I had no idea light behaved like that inside a nebula. It got me thinking if there is still some remnants of a nebula in our solar system, but is undetectable with the human eye. Perhaps left over when the sun and the solar system was formed billions of years ago.

Still I found this very cool!

[ndjarnag]

...geez, cheap humor.

seriously, great video! subscribed!

[ConstantlyQuestion]

CF's suck, thats why I cover mine with a sheet of paper and reflect it off the wall.

[paulsuckow]

interesting idea, but all that reflecting the light can do is subtract more frequencies from the already deficient light. i can see that the scattering of the fluorescent lighting might help it seem more pleasant to the eye, but it doesn't fill in the missing frequencies. CFLs are compelling however because of the energy and money they save.

[theinquisitor]

Something I'd like to see close up is the rings of Saturn. How large are the particles of the ring, and how densely packed are they?

[knutervalve64]

if you put a gun to your head youll get a bigger picture--are you a teacher

[Salladsdressing]

Love these videos! Do more of the Q&A's!

[CivilHuman]

One thing I don't get is that cosmologist say the universe is expanding and from every galaxy it would look like its the center of the universe. Then some say Andromeda might crash into us one day.

[IRONMANAustralia]

Wiki "Blue Shift", it mentions the Andromeda Galaxy specifically.

That reminds me of a Creationist anti-Big-Bang site that argued that in saying everything is moving away from us, (redshift), "evolutionists" must be arguing that our solar system is at the centre of the universe - a new form of geocentricism.

I was always rather fond of that one. It's like they're loudly proclaiming, "Obviously the Earth is flat, if it were round the people on the bottom would fall off stupid!"

[CivilHuman]

So everything isn't moving away from each other. I herd that from each galaxy's perspective ever other galaxy would appear to be moving away, there fore making it look like the center. It was in a physic's lecture on google. ahh the Internet rules. It was kind of old, and we know how science changes. I've herd of the concept blue shift in many videos about the universe, The most common example of how it works is high a car honking its horn moving away is low pitched apposed to moving toward.

[CivilHuman]

Im not a Christian's or a Muslim, but I would advise keeping religion out of a non-religious questions. A little pop shot because I'm not to fond on Richard Dawkins style tactics. lol

[CivilHuman]

Damn I need to proof read my stuff, one of these times I'll remember. ahhhhh

[theinquisitor]

CivilHuman, as I understand it, there are galaxies that are moving towards each other on relatively small scales (small in terms of the size of the visible universe), but the general trend is towards expansion. Andromeda is one of the closest galaxies to us, but the ones at greater distances are moving away, and at greater speeds the further away they are. The name given to that fact is Hubble's law, the further away a galaxy is, the faster it moves relatively, away from us.

[CivilHuman]

OOooo Aaaa So happy I found your channel.

[dorbie]

A good if imperfect analogy (on a different scale) here is the Milky Way vs. Andromeda we still see both but form a different perspective, but each only looks spectacular and shows significant structure to the aided eye.

[redshift40]

The sky would look incredible looking out from the inside of a large globular star cluster. We only see a few thousand dim stars, imagine the sky with a million bright stars in it.

[acs1978au]

Phillip Plait - NASA disinformation agent and member of the illuminati. On the serious side though, what a fascinating video - thanks.

[dorbie]

Some nebulae are visible to the naked eye, for example the Eagle Nebula. This would make them visible to the naked eye up close. While the light is spread the luminosity would be consistent until you actually entered the nebula, but even that wouldn't eliminate it. It probably wouldn't look as spectacular and defined as the enhanced Hubble images you'd see the nebula. It would still probably be an anticlimax, but if you went there you could take instruments.

[JamesTCA]

God did build the Universe to make us happy. The Torah says so.

[mddawson1]

I thought it was the bible or was it the koran, maybe the book of mormon or dianetics??? Or more likely they are all wrong & the universe just is irrespective of our ability to appreciate it (rational science types) or not (religious god made it all for me types).

[elkabong2501]

Cool stuff. If you were in a nebula, would you still be able to see the stars outside, or would they be blocked/distorted by all the gas/dust etc?

Keep it up!

[JamesTCA]

Did you actually watch the video?!

[thequestionmarkofGod]

Even if there was nothing to see in the moment... to come out of it and look back at the photos, at the distant images and say to yourself "I was inside that" imagine...

If we could really experience that kind of beauty from within... well I can imagine no possible result for myself but a literal death of awe.

It would be a damn good way to go. Fuck... Yeah.

[rippemies]

Wow. That's pretty awesome. The universe is truly an interesting place.

[IRONMANAustralia]

Meh. I've seen better. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this universe a 2.

"... there's nothing out there, you know. There's nobody out there. No alien monsters, no Zargon warships, no beautiful blondes with beehive hairdos who say, `Show me some more of this Earth thing called kissing'. There's just you, me, the Cat, and a lot of floating smegging rocks." -- Dave Lister.

[kwakhed23]

phil, this is one of your best yet. great mix of science, philosophy and entertainment.

instead of planetary nebulae, what about emission nebulae, especially ones that have globules or protostars embedded in them? there's an animation from uc san diego of flying through the orion nebula. if you've seen it, any comment on how accurate it is?

[CousinoMacul]

Here's what Phil wrote in the comments of blog post on the subject.

"Mind you, this is only for planetary nebulae. The view inside, say, the Orion Nebula would still be fantastic. That's because it has far denser regions, and filaments which would be bright enough to see."

[skibby]

thanks for the clarification, I had wondered about that myself.

[PsychoBlack]

Nice

Thanks for the info

[foley15136]

Can we see any Brown Dwarfs with anything orbiting? Or are they too far?

I'm going to buy my first telescope soon. Do you recommend anything? I'm just an amateur that's fascinated. Not a student or anything. Just a curious guy with some time.

[CousinoMacul]

I got a Bushnell North Star for Christmas. I really like it. I would recommend it to any amateur who's getting started.

[Ezcut]

nice

[noswonky]

If I could see Scarlett Johansson up close, the spectral characteristics of the light reflecting off her would not be uppermost in my mind.

[CousinoMacul]

So I guess the question becomes: How do we know that we're NOT in a nebula right now?

(Brown Dwarfs are cool, but not as cool as brown pigmies -- Har har)

[kwakhed23]

zodiacal light would indicate that there is gas and dust floating around the solar system, but whether it extends far enough to consider it a nebula would be very difficult to tell.

[Clausfarre]

It's Brown Little People, be political correct.

[JamesTCA]

No, the NCLR doesn't like that one.

[mddawson1]

Persons of limited stature? (the brown part needs to be dropped to be PC)