Wonders in Orion

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Rob­berto (Space Tele­scope Sci­ence Institute/ESA) and the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope Orion Trea­sury Project Team

The Great Neb­ula in Orion, shown in this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, is a place of won­der. The neb­ula, also known as M42, shows flow­ers in gas, giant pil­lars of dust and mas­sive stars. Strong winds from mas­sive stars found in the cen­ter of the neb­ula carved out a great cav­ity in the nebula.

More than 3,000 stars of var­i­ous sizes and bright­nesses appear in this image. Look for the bright­est part of the neb­ula. Zoom in on a group of four stars. Radi­a­tion from these stars, called the Trapez­ium, causes the gas of the neb­ula to glow show­ing us wispy pat­terns and dense dust lanes. Just below and to the right of the Trapez­ium, find a star with a “bow shock” around it. Like a boat in the water, gas and dust stream­ing away from the stars of the Trapez­ium flow around the star. How many other bow shocks around stars can you find?

Wan­der more to the right in the image and you can see arcs and bub­bles formed when gas and dust car­ried by the solar winds smashed into cooler, denser material.

In the upper part of the image, you’ll find another neb­ula sep­a­rated by a dense band of dust. A mas­sive star lights up this region, known as M43. Astronomers call this a minia­ture Orion Nebula.

The Orion Neb­ula is a stel­lar nurs­ery where stars are born. Some objects in the neb­ula came close to becom­ing stars but didn’t quite make it. In this image, The Hub­ble Space Tele­scope shows a glimpse of pos­si­ble brown dwarf stars. Brown dwarfs are failed stars that didn’t have enough mass and fuel to cause them to ignite. These cool objects are too small and can­not sus­tain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does. Fusion is the power source of all stars. Astronomers used this image to see for the first time binary brown dwarfs; two brown dwarfs orbit­ing each other.

The neb­ula, clearly vis­i­ble in win­ter skies just below the three stars that make up the Belt of Orion, is only about 1,500 light years from Earth. It offers astronomers a great place in which to study how stars are born.

Comments

Mila Jones 08-01-2010, 15:50

Cloaked wiz­ard with an old lady’s face to the right.

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