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People love nebulas and all in sci-fi, specially for space battles and all so the background looks more interesting than just black.

But I am wondering, if you are inside a nebula while in a warship, would what it would like?

And more importantly... would it affect the range of what you can see (both visually and with sensors), and would it interfere with laser and similar weapons?

speeder
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Disappointingly, from inside a nebula will look pretty much like "empty" space. Because it is empty space; most gas nebulae are thinner vacuum than anything that's routinely produced in a lab (including the interiors of particle accelerators, laser cavities, or inside vacuum tubes).

In order to see a nebula as an "object" you need to see through a very large distance of gas denser than the usual interstellar medium, and it needs to be lit by nearby bright stars. If you're inside the nebula, though, even the starlit gas will be invisible because it will become the "black background" you'd see it against.

Zeiss Ikon
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  • Well, if the nebula was big enough and you were in deep enough it stuff sufficiently far from you or outside it would be obscured. – DKNguyen Jul 20 '20 at 18:36
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    @DKNguyen A common reflection nebulae will have a thickness along our line of vision from Earth of tens of light years. Few indeed are nebulae dense enough to fully block starlight from behind the nebula -- Coal Sack, maybe (actually a dust cloud, also several light years across). – Zeiss Ikon Jul 20 '20 at 18:39
  • Hmmm, actually I just looked it up and apparently nebula have a defined size far smaller than I thought it would be (several AU at most). I thought some could be light years across but apparently not. EDIT: Actually, another source has some listed as being many light years across. – DKNguyen Jul 20 '20 at 18:41
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    @DKNguyen Planetary nebulae are several tens of AU up to a couple hundred. The Veil Nebula (or which the Orion Nebula is a tiny concentration) is hundreds of light years across. – Zeiss Ikon Jul 20 '20 at 18:48