Flower of Orion

Credit: Euro­pean South­ern Obser­va­tory (ESO)

Explore the folds and petals of the Orion Neb­ula in this dra­matic new image from ESO’s VISTA sur­vey tele­scope. VISTA’s infrared vision allows to deeply into this well-known neb­ula show­ing young active stars and regions of warm gas. As we peer through a tele­scope at the Orion Neb­ula, we see only a small part of the light stream­ing to us. The infrared sen­sors on NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope and VISTA show a much larger com­plex of gas and dust, all mate­r­ial for new stars to form.

Explore the neb­ula. We see the famil­iar flower shaped form of the Orion Neb­ula and petal-shaped areas of gas sur­round­ing the heart of the neb­ula. With a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion, we can eas­ily see the 3D nature of the neb­ula with a ledge at the top and at the heart of the Great Neb­ula lie the four bright stars that form the Trapez­ium. These young, hot stars send out a strong solar wind that have hol­lowed out an area of the neb­ula. Scorch­ing ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion causes the gas to glow. What is new in this image are the count­less young stars that can­not be seen in vis­i­ble light. These young stars, in many cases, are glow­ing through the clouds in which they formed. These stars also send streams of fast-moving gas scream­ing at 700,000 miles an hour into the sur­round­ing cloud. Red globs of light show in the upper part of the image and seem to be asso­ci­ated with the col­li­sion of the young stars out­flow and the peace­ful neb­ula sur­round­ing the new stars. Search also for back­ground galax­ies. A bright edge-on spi­ral can be seen to the right of the cen­ter area of the image.

The Orion Neb­ula, or M42, is one of the biggest star-making fac­to­ries in the galaxy. And it’s pretty close; only about 1,350 light-years from Earth. The Great Neb­ula in Orion lies just below the Belt of Orion in the sword and is faintly vis­i­ble as a glow­ing cloud of gray-green. French comet-hunter, Charles Messier sketched its main fea­tures in the mid eigh­teenth cen­tury and gave it the num­ber 42 in his cat­a­log. William Her­schel guessed at the Orion Nebula’s true nature when he said it might be “the chaotic mate­r­ial of future suns.”

VISTA, short for Vis­i­ble and Infrared Sur­vey Tele­scope for Astron­omy is the lat­est addi­tion to ESO’s Paranal Obser­va­tory in Chile. It is the largest sur­vey tele­scope in the world with a large, 4.1 meter mir­ror, wide field of view, and sen­si­tive detectors.