the visual spectrum makes for spiffy postcards, but the UV and IR ranges of light penetrate gas clouds better, and carry more information about chemical composition, etc.

so actually a visual light camera would be a waste of money.

or are you one of those guys who thinks that nasa should be scrapped?

Eta Carinae and the Great Nebula in Orion appear a ghostly grey in a 1M scope. The nebulosity in the Pleides is somewhat blue. Eta Carinae (30 Doradus) at the distance of the Orion Nebula (1,500 ly.) would be colorful (shades of red) in a modest .5 meter scope and most likely to the naked eye under dark sky conditions.

It would be a glorious sight. We’ll just have to settle for the Spitzer and Hubble photos.

The Tarantula is the largest stellar nursery we know in the local Universe. In fact if this enormous complex of stars, gas and dust were at the distance of the Orion Nebula it would be visible during the day and cover a quarter of the sky.

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMUXM2AR2E_extreme_0.html

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0704/carina_hst_big.jpg

THIS is the Biggest nebula in the area…

Miguel…..you hit it perfectly.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest.

But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

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http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/index.cfm