Posted on 01/11/2006 4:31:55 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Failed stars, baby stars and vast cosmic canyons of dust and gas were on display in a new Hubble Space Telescope image of the Orion Nebula released on Wednesday.
"Orion is a bustling caldron of activity," Jennifer Wiseman of NASA said in a statement released with the image at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
The most eye-catching feature of the image may be the caverns of light where thousands of stars are forming. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes are apparent.
For the first time, Hubble was able to spot young brown dwarf stars -- cool objects too small to be ordinary stars because they lack the ability to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores as the sun does. They are also known as failed stars.
Orion is a good place to study how stars are born because it is only 1,500 light-years away, a relative stone's throw in astronomical terms. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.
The Hubble, the world's first space-based optical telescope, was deployed in 1990.
The image and more information are available online at http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/01.
Failed stars, baby stars and vast cosmic canyons of dust and gas were on display in this new Hubble Space Telescope image of the Orion Nebula released on January 11, 2006. The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, represents the sharpest view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. (NASA,ESA, M. Robberto - Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team/Handout/Reuters)
Above shot is of the Orion constellation.
Credit: Copyright © Anglo-Australian Telescope, photo by David Malin from plates taken with the UK Schmidt Telescope
I must have missed something, "bustling cauldron" of
Orion portends what?
Dont get me wrong the picture is great, what is the
significance?
Is it stars are forming on their own thus there is no God
no Creator?
Looks more like God's backyard workshop to me. ;)
I believe you have mistakenly posted a photo of Katie Couric's colonoscopy!
Does anyone else see a Darth Vader head/face on the right side of the first image?
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