Quote:
Originally Posted by MAPNUT
Also photos of nebulas are time exposures, capturing light over time which is too faint for your eye to see in real time. If you have access to a good telescope, get a look at Orion's sword where the famous nebula is. You've seen brilliant photos of it in glorious color, but live, in a telescope, it's just a faint gray cloud. Experts correct me if I'm wrong, but I think even if you were close enough for it to fill the sky, it would still be pale and gray. Also CMIIAW, but I think the famous Horsehead Nebula is scarcely visible at all in real time and can only be seen with a time exposure?
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Through a decent telescope, the Orion nebula can look spectacular. You can pick out subtle cloud detail and on dark nights it has a pale greenish hue since that is the color our eyes are most sensitive to. Through a very large telescope, on an exceptional night away from light pollution, you can see faint red highlights. Don Davis has some color sketches of the Orion Nebula at the bottom of
this page.
The Horsehead nebula is infamously hard to see visually, but with a proper filter and a decent sized telescope, you can see it. Of course, it is easier in large telescopes, but there are reports of it being seen in surprisingly small telescopes.
You are right that nebulae become dimmer and more diffuse when you get closer to them, I've never had a precise answer to whether you could actually see them up close though. You probably wouldn't be able to see color.