New ESO Image Shows Off Orion's Fiery Clouds
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released a new image of the constellation of Orion showing part of the Orion Molecular Cloud. The image shows off...
Latest Orion Nebula Stories
WASHINGTON, April 19, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory's launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. (Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever...
[ Watch the Video: Zooming In On The Planetary Nebula IC 1295 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new image released by the European Space Observatory (ESO) shows the glowing green planetary nebula IC 1295. The new pictures taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the nebula surrounding a dim and dying star located about 3300 light-years away in the constellation of Scutum (The Shield). "It has the unusual feature of being surrounded by multiple shells...
University of Tennessee's National Institute for Computational Sciences Many newly formed stars are surrounded by what are called protoplanetary disks, swirling masses of warm dust and gas that can constitute the core of a developing solar system. Proof of the existence of such disks didn’t come until 1994, when the Hubble telescope examined young stars in the Orion Nebula. Protoplanetary disks may potentially become celestial bodies such as planets and asteroids. But just how they...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have found that a region of space known as the Wing has fewer “metals” (elements with more than two protons in the nucleus) compared to most other areas within our own Milky Way galaxy. There are also relatively lower amounts of gas, dust and stars in the Wing compared to the Milky Way. This knowledge makes the Wing an excellent candidate for the study of the life cycle of stars and the gas lying between them. Not...
National Optical Astronomy Observatory Watching starbirth isn’t easy: tens of millions of years are needed to form a star like our Sun. Much like archeologists who reconstruct ancient cities from shards of debris strewn over time, astronomers must reconstruct the birth process of stars indirectly, by observing stars in different stages of the process and inferring the changes that take place. Studies show that half of the common stars, including our Sun, formed in massive clusters, rich...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Stars with ten times or more the mass of our Sun should not exist. They push away the gas they feed on as they grow, starving themselves for fuel. Astrophysicists have been struggling to understand how some stars are able to overcome this developmental hurdle. A group of researchers led by the University of Toronto suggests that baby stars might grow to have great mass if they are lucky enough to be born within a corral of older...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have unveiled a new image of recently formed bright blue stars in the cluster NGC 2547. Astronomers using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the European Space Observatory's (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile took images of the stars while they were focusing in on the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). Despite the universe being roughly 13.8 billion years old, new stars and objects are...
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory The tangle of clouds and stars that lie in Orion's sword is showcased in a new, expansive view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Orion, the famous hunter, is visible in evening skies throughout the world from about December through April. The constellation appears tranquil and still to the naked eye, but lying in its sword, at what appears to be a slightly fuzzy star, is a turbulent cauldron of stellar birth. WISE scanned the...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new image released by the European Space Observatory (ESO) taken by its Wide Field Imager shows off a section of the Seagull Nebula. The cloud of dust and glowing gas seen in the image that forms the "wings" of the seagull reveals a mix of dark and glowing red clouds. The Seagull Nebula, or IC 2177, lies between the constellations of Canis Major and Monoceros in the southern sky. Astronomers refer to...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new image released by the European Space Observatory (ESO) shows off a great view of clouds of cosmic dust in Orion. ESO's Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile helps bring out the heat glow of the dust, revealing places where new stars are being formed. Dense clouds of cosmic gas and dust in space are the birthplaces of new stars. When viewing these in visible light, the dust is dark and obscuring, which helps...
Latest Orion Nebula Reference Libraries
Planetary Nebula -- A planetary nebula is an astronomical object that usually appears nebulous and disk-like in low-resolution observations. Because of this appearance, similar to the appearance of planets in early observations, the "planetary" adjective was attached and has since been retained for historical consistency. According to current observations and models, planetary nebulae in fact have little to do with planets. Instead, as a small star (less than a few times the mass...
Saturn Nebula -- The layers of the Saturn Nebula give a complex picture of how this planetary nebula was created. The above picture, taken in April 1996 and released last week, allows a better understanding of the mysterious process that transformed a low-mass star into a white dwarf star. A computer model indicates that the central star of NGC 7009 first expelled the green gas that now appears barrel shaped. This green gas now confines stellar winds flowing from the central star,...
Owl Nebula -- Dicovered by Pierre Mchain in 1781. The Owl Nebula M97 is one of the fainter objects in Messier's catalog, discovered by Pierre Mchain on February 16, 1781. In his description of this object, Charles Messier also mentions two other nebulous objects that he (and Mchain) have seen at about the same time, but which he had not added in his printed catalog version of 1781 (in the Connaissance des Temps for 1784). As the description is obvious and he added positions by...
Orion Nebula -- Discovered 1610 by Nicholas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. Located at a distance of about 1,600 (or perhaps 1,500) light years, the Orion Nebula is the brightest diffuse nebula in the sky, visible to the naked eye, and rewarding in telescopes of every size, from the smallest glasses to the greatest Earth-bound observatories and the Hubble Space Telescope. It is the main part of a much larger cloud of gas and dust which extends over 10 degrees well over half the constellation...
Hubble's Variable Nebula -- Hubble's variable nebula is named (like the Hubble telescope itself) after the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who carried out some of the early studies of this object. It is a fan-shaped cloud of gas and dust which is illuminated by R Monocerotis (R Mon), the bright star at the bottom end of the nebula. Dense condensations of dust near the star cast shadows out into the nebula, and as they move the illumination changes, giving rise to the variations first...
