(May 10, 2015 at 1:46 pm)Neimenovic Wrote: EIn case you ever wondered what it would look like if the Orion Nebula, aka Messier 42 was 4 light years away from Earth instead of the actual 1,344
The problem with this kind of reconstruction is it is very difficult, as well as somewhat anti-climactic, to get the actual surface brightness of the object to appear realistic, similar to as would appear to the naked eye. Furthermore how realistic the surface brightness seems on a monitor also depends on the ambient lighting.
What is certain is even at 4 light years, the surface brightness of Orion Nebula as it would appear to the naked eye even on a very dark night is unlikely to be anywhere near as intense or vivid as the computer graphics.
One example of this graphic exaggeration is a typical rendering of our Milky Way Galaxy. Often illustrators attempt to show what Milky Way might look like if we lived just above the disk of the Galaxy. But keep in mind the surface brightness of milky does not change no matter what distance you look at it from. The only thing that change is how much surface there is. So if you hang just above the disk of Milky Way, Milky Way pin wheel will stretch spectacularly across the entire sky. But the surface brightness of the that pin wheel would be exactly the same as what you see now from back yard, a very subdued milky haze.