Discovery
Edwin Hubble distinguished between the emission and reflection nebulae in 1922.
Reflection nebulae are usually blue because the scattering is more efficient for blue light than red (this is the same scattering process that gives us blue skies and red sunsets).
Reflection nebulae and emission nebulae are often seen together and are sometimes both referred to as diffuse nebulae.
Some 500 reflection nebulae are known. Among the nicest of the reflection nebulae are those surrounding the stars of the Pleiades. A blue reflection nebula can also be seen in the same area of the sky as the Trifid Nebula. The giant star Antares, which is very red (spectral class M1), is surrounded by a large, red reflection nebula.
Reflection nebulae may also be the site of star formation.
Read more about this topic: Reflection Nebula
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son’s future are counting on me.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)