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Imagine an up-close view of a red supergiant star, a peek inside a glowing nebula churning out new stars, and spying a myriad of other objects in our galaxy as you have never seen them before--in invisible radio light! That is the experience you will get through the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s (NRAO) newly released Orion Explorer installment of its popular Milky Way Explorer, an online tour of our interstellar neighborhood guided by the actual astronomers who study it using radio waves. Unlike familiar optical telescopes, which can only study objects illuminated by stars, radio telescopes can see the otherwise invisible cold, dark features in space. This includes the faint radio light that is naturally emitted by the molecules and chemicals that make up vast interstellar clouds where new stars are born, like the Orion Nebula.
Image credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF
