Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Dust of the Orion Nebula

NASA ^ | December 29, 2015 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: What surrounds a hotbed of star formation? In the case of the Orion Nebula -- dust. The entire Orion field, located about 1600 light years away, is inundated with intricate and picturesque filaments of dust. Opaque to visible light, dust is created in the outer atmosphere of massive cool stars and expelled by a strong outer wind of particles. The Trapezium and other forming star clusters are embedded in the nebula. The intricate filaments of dust surrounding M42 and M43 appear brown in the featured image, while central glowing gas is highlighted in red. Over the next few million years much of Orion's dust will be slowly destroyed by the very stars now being formed, or dispersed into the Galaxy.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit and Copyright: Raul Villaverde Fraile]

[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[SunkenCiv]

The Big One

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[left that other site]

Beautiful!

Though somewhat nebulous.

[Sioux-san]

Don’t you just love a good nebula!

[Impy]

The galaxy is like a great big chicken, just waiting to get plucked.

[left that other site]

Yes, especially the Sirius ones.

[metmom]

AWESOME!!

[Sioux-san]

Yayyy! Good on you - thanks & Happy New Year!

[Red Badger]

This will clean it up..............gonna need a bigger can, though................