Brilliant Nursery

The Orion Nebula glows brilliantly in this new infrared view from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. In addition to thousands of young stars, the image shows billowing clouds of gas and dust that are collapsing to form more stars, as well as the faint glow of the failed stars known as brown dwarfs. These small bodies are so cool that they emit most of their light in the infrared. The image, which is the deepest infrared view of the nebula yet obtained, also shows cavities in the dust clouds cleared out by the radiation and winds of hot, young stars, as well as the faint glow of stellar embryos that are still enwrapped in their dusty cocoons. The nebula is about 1,350 light-years away, and is visible to the unaided eye as a faint, hazy smudge of light in Orion's sword. [ESO/H. Drass et al.]