Fact Sheet
Star Nursery
The Orion Nebula is a vast complex of gas and dust that has given birth to thousands of stars, with many more still taking shape. This new image, from the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile, shows many of the nebula's hotter, brighter stars, as well as the filaments of gas and dust where new stars are being born. The nebula is about 1,350 light-years away, and is visible to the unaided eye as a faint smudge of light below Orion's Belt. [ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA/Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit]
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