Where's the LIKE-button?
I am reading it bit by bit, like a Christmas cookie I nibble on over days. Sooo fascinating, learning about the gigantic powers wrestling with each other over the course of aeons.
And then looking so harmlessly beautiful in DSO images.
I find, without having any previous astro-scientific knowledge nor inner access to either mathematics nor formulas, I can still enjoy reading this article. I skip the parts I feel too undereducated for, and sentences like this one: "One seemingly feckless star in our eyepieces is responsible for the whole shebang: σ Ori." or these two: "If we were astride the Horsehead, σ Ori would be a stellar dot about as bright as the gibbous moon. If we were on σ Ori looking back the Horsehead would be a round blob larger than the Coal Sack"
make the article accessible and enjoyable even to me. They're pulling me into a "story".
The only other pieces of this kind, scientific yet accessible and belletristic, I ever read were Dana's posting describing Paul's M8 and her words regarding the faint reflecting dust clouds around LMC/SMC. If I may be so blunt: I enjoyed these a little bit more than the Horsehead writeup.
If anyone can point me towards more of this kind of well written, knowledgable DSO literature, I'd be totally grateful!
Thank you for posting this article.
And all the best all around for 2019!
Annette