The Sword of Orion

In the constellation of Orion, the hunter's belt is seen as three distinctive stars in a row. Hanging just "below" this belt is a fuzzy region, easily seen with the naked eye on a dark night, which is known as the "Sword," or "Great Nebula" of Orion.

At a distance of 1500 light years, this is the nearest large region of star formation and is one of the most studied regions of the sky. A giant stellar nursery, the Orion nebula is home to thousands of young stars, some of which are known to have disks of dust that may be forming new planets. At its core, a cluster of four massive stars (known as the Trapezium) provide most of the energy that causes this nebula to glow.

This infrared view of the Orion Nebula looks markedly different than the many familiar images taken in visible light. One reason is that hot, ionized gas emits much more visible than infrared light, mostly in the red part of the spectrum. However, in the infrared the obscuring clouds of dust are more transparent, allowing us to see deeper into this star forming region and revealing otherwise hidden stars. None of the reddest objects in this picture can be seen in visible light.

Image Credit: NASA/NSF/CalTech/UMass
Acknowledgement: Atlas Image [or Atlas Image mosaic] obtained as part of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.

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