{"id":585,"date":"2019-11-21T02:18:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T02:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/?p=585"},"modified":"2019-11-21T02:18:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T02:18:10","slug":"the-orion-nebula-window-into-a-stellar-nursery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/?p=585","title":{"rendered":"The Orion Nebula: Window Into a Stellar Nursery"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Prosper\"\"<\/a>
\nNASA JPL<\/p>\n

Winter begins in December for observers in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing cold nights and the return of one of the most famous constellations to our early evening skies: Orion the Hunter!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Orion is a striking pattern of stars and is one of the few constellations whose pattern is repeated almost unchanged in the star stories of cultures around the world. Below the three bright stars of Orion\u2019s Belt lies his sword, where you can find the famous Orion Nebula, also known as M42. The nebula is visible to our unaided eyes in even moderately light-polluted skies as a fuzzy \u201cstar\u201d in the middle of Orion\u2019s Sword. M42 is about 20 light years across, which helps with its visibility since it\u2019s roughly 1,344 light years away! Baby stars, including the famous \u201cTrapezium\u201d cluster, are found inside the nebula\u2019s whirling gas clouds. These gas clouds also hide \u201cprotostars\u201d from view: objects in the process of becoming stars, but that have not yet achieved fusion at their core.<\/p>\n

The Orion Nebula is a small window into a vastly larger area of star formation centered around the constellation of Orion itself. NASA\u2019s Great Observatories, space telescopes like Hubble, Spitzer, Compton, and Chandra, studied this area in wavelengths we can\u2019t see with our earthbound eyes, revealing the entire constellation alight with star birth, not just the comparatively tiny area of the nebula. Why then can we only see the nebula? M42 contains hot young stars whose stellar winds blew away their cocoons of gas after their \u201cbirth,\u201d the moment when they begin to fuse hydrogen into helium. Those gas clouds, which block visible light, were cleared away just enough to give us a peek inside at these young stars. The rest of the complex remains hidden to human eyes, but not to advanced space-based telescopes.<\/p>\n

We put telescopes in orbit to get above the interference of our atmosphere, which absorbs many wavelengths of light. Infrared space telescopes, such as Spitzer and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, detect longer wavelengths of light that allow them to see through the dust clouds in Orion, revealing hidden stars and cloud structures. It\u2019s similar to the infrared goggles firefighters wear to see through smoke from burning buildings and wildfires.<\/p>\n

Learn more about how astronomers combine observations made at different wavelengths with the Night Sky Network activity, \u2018The Universe in a Different Light,\u201d downloadable from bit.ly\/different-light-nsn<\/a>. You can find more stunning science and images from NASA\u2019s Great Observatories at nasa.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Caption: This image from NASA\u2019s Spitzer missions shows Orion in a different light \u2013 quite literally! Note the small outline of the Orion Nebula region in the visible light image on the left, versus the massive amount of activity shown in the infrared image of the same region on the right. Image Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/IRAS \/H. McCallon. From <\/em>bit.ly\/SpitzerOrion<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

This article is distributed by NASA Night Sky Network\u00a0 <\/strong>The Night Sky Network program supports astronomy clubs across the USA dedicated to astronomy outreach. Visit nightsky.jpl.nasa.org<\/a> to find local clubs, events, and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Prosper NASA JPL Winter begins in December for observers in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing cold nights and the return of one of the most famous constellations to our early evening skies: Orion the Hunter!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nasa-space-place"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lunar.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}