Red Planets and Solar Nurseries

I've been learning to use a star map to find stuff in the sky. The other day I found the Andromeda Galaxy with my binoculars. It was only a little fuzzy patch, but it was cool to find it by myself.

Tonight, I tried to take some digital pictures of Mars and the orion nebula using my new camera that Ed got me for my birthday. I set it on 2-second exposure. Here's Mars with a lot of magnification:



I'm pretty sure I can detect a red planet in there somewhere...

Here's the Orion Nebula:



I like this one because you can faintly see one star shining right in the middle and illuminating the nebula (it's almost easier to see out of the corner of your eye than looking straight on). It's a young star that has formed from the gas in the nebula. When enough stars have formed from the nebula's gas, the solar wind they put off will clear out the remaining gas and the nebula will disappear.

Here's a really cool picture of it: Orion Nebula