One of the brightest, closest nebulas to Earth just got its clearest close-up ever.
Dad jokes aside, Orion is one of the best known and most studied constellations in the Milky Way. With its nearest stars located just a few hundred light-years from Earth, the constellation is home to some of the largest and brightest stars in the sky and a thriving nursery of fiery, newborn stars ripe for studying.
The images, shared Monday in a statement, do not include the infamous triple-star"belt" of Orion, but rather focus on Orion's gassy"sword" hanging just to the south. At the center of the sword lies the Orion Nebula — one of the biggest and brightest star-forming regions close to Earth. "Massive young stars emit large quantities of ultraviolet radiation directly into the cloud that still surrounds them, and this changes the physical shape of the cloud as well as its chemical makeup," Els Peeters, an astronomy professor at Western University in Ontario, Canada, said in a statement."These new observations allow us to better understand how massive stars transform the gas and dust cloud in which they are born.