Hubble Images Star Forming Regions in the Orion Nebula
Orion Nebula M42 Hubble pictures:
A star forming region,
Protoplanetary disks,
Proplyd close-up.
Other HST pictures of M42:
Pre-repair,
November 1995,
January 1997,
May 1997 (OMC 1 with NIC),
August 2000 (Trapezium in IR),
April 2001 (Proplyds under hot radiation).
A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a region of the Great
Nebula in Orion.
This is one of the nearest regions of very recent star formation
(300,000 years ago). The nebula is a giant gas cloud illuminated
by the brightest of the young hot stars at the top of the
picture. Many of the fainter young stars are surrounded by disks
of dust and gas that are slightly more than twice the diameter of
the Solar System.
The great plume of gas in the lower left in this picture is the
result of the ejection of material from a recently formed star.
The brightest portions are "hills" on the surface of the nebula,
and the long bright bar is where Earth observers look along a
long "wall" on a gaseous surface. The diagonal length of the
image is 1.6 light-years. Red light depicts emission in
Nitrogen; green is Hydrogen; and blue is Oxygen.
The Orion Nebula star-birth region is 1,500 light-years away, in
the direction of the constellation Orion the Hunter.
Original press release (STScI-PR94-24a)
Close-Up of "Proplyds" in Orion
A Hubble Space Telescope view of a small portion of the Orion
Nebula reveals five young stars. Four of the stars are
surrounded by gas and dust trapped as the stars formed, but were
left in orbit about the star. These are possibly protoplanetary
disks, or "proplyds," that might evolve on to agglomerate
planets. The proplyds which are closest to the hottest stars of
the parent star cluster are seen as bright objects, while the
object farthest from the hottest stars is seen as a dark object.
The field of view is only 0.14 light-years across.
Above images were taken on 29 December 1993 with the HST's Wide
Field and Planetary Camera 2. They were thus among the first images
obtained with the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope after the
Space Shuttle servicing mission, STS-61.
Original press release (STScI-PR94-24b)
A Hubble Space Telescope view of a very young star (between
300,000 and a million years of age) surrounded by material left
over from the star's formation. The cool, reddish star is about
one fifth the mass of our Sun. The dark disk, seen in silhouette
against the background of the Orion Nebula, is possibly a
protoplanetary disk from which planets will form. The disk
contains at least seven times the material as our Earth. The
disk is 56 billion miles across (90 billion kilometers), or 7.5
times the diameter of our Solar System.
The Orion Nebula starbirth region is 1,500 light-years away, in
the direction of the constellation Orion the Hunter.
The image was taken on 29 December 1993 with the HST's Wide Field
and Planetary Camera 2, WFPC2, in PC mode.
Original press release (STScI-PR94-24c)
Credit: C.R. O'Dell/Rice University, and NASA
The images in this page were used to produce a nice
Orion Nebula Animation,
simulating an approach to a protostar in the Orion nebula
[Caption].
More, newer (Nov 1995) Hubble images
of and informations on the Orion Nebula and its protoplanetary disks.
Hartmut Frommert
(spider@seds.org)
Christine Kronberg
(smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Last Modification: 6 Jul 1999, 23:55 MET