The Orion Nebula
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- Written by:
- Lindzi Wessel
- View full credits
The colorful Orion Nebula lies in our Milky Way galaxy about 1,500 light-years from Earth. A vast expanse of valleys and pillars carved through cosmic swirls of gas and dust, this stellar nursery encompasses a complete range of star formation. Images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveal thousands of developing stars scattered throughout the region. Deep inside the nebula, which spans about 15 light-years, cold and dense clouds of gas collapse under their own gravity. As each cloud contracts, its core compresses and heats until nuclear fusion ignites a new star. Over hundreds of thousands of years, newborn planetary systems arise from the dust and gas that wrap the stars with shadowy disks. The observations by Hubble provide scientists with a glimpse into how our sun and planets formed five billion years ago. Watch the video for a tour of the nebula.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Video and images courtesy of NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA/The Hubble Heritage Team
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Writer
- Lindzi Wessel (USRA) [Lead]
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Scientist
- Frank Summers (STScI)
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ID: 13320 Produced Video
Hubble Shows Torrential Outflows from Infant Stars May Not Stop Them from Growing
Read moreThough our galaxy is an immense city of at least 200 billion stars, the details of how they formed remain largely cloaked in mystery. Scientists know that stars form from the collapse of huge hydrogen clouds that are squeezed under gravity to the point where nuclear fusion ignites. But only about 30 percent of the cloud’s initial mass winds up as a newborn star. Where does the rest of the hydrogen go during such a terribly inefficient process?For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Paul Morris: Lead Producer Additional Visualizations:Zoom In To Star Formation: ESA, Silicon WorldsWide Image of Orion Complex: Image courtesy of Rogelio Bernal Andreo, DeepSkyColors.comHerschel and Rosette Nebula: ESA - C. CarreauSpace Cloud: ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)Zoom out of Milky Way: ESA, Silicon WorldsMusic Credits: "Winter Solstice" by Laetitia Frenod [SACEM] via Koka Media [SACEM], Universal Publishing Production Music France [SACEM], and Universal Production Music. ||
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