Living in Orions Belt

[drmorbius]

I was having a look at the APOD today of the reflection nebula in Orion (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061010.html) and had an interesting thought. :rolleyes:

While reflection and emmission nebula are magnificent to look at from parsecs away, what would we see if our solar system were in the middle of it? Would the night sky be dominated by light haze or is it so diffuse that we'd see nothing at all?

[Astroman]

depending on the amount of dust and gasses around I would say it would hardly be noticable. Then again, how would you know any different. The people in the clouds would be thinking, "While reflection and emmission nebula are magnificent to look at from close up naked eye, what would we see if our solar system were in the middle of that area devoid of gasses? Would the night sky be dominated by nothing or full of light?"

Very interesting topic.

[mickoking]

I think the night sky of such a planet wouldn't be particually remarkable. The sky would perhaps be dominated by a faint glow and it would be fairly star poor too? Just my idle speculation mind you ;)

[robagar]

Does this reasoning make sense - it's thick/bright/opaque enough to hide most of the stars behind it from our point of view. Someone on a planet in the middle, who would be looking through half the thickness of dust, would be able to see the stars beyond the nebula twice as well as us.

So my guess is, it would be like having really bad light pollution =)

[mattweather]

i live in earth and u all live in orion belt where all sexual aliens lives