Dust of the Orion Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright:
Raul Villaverde Fraile
What surrounds a hotbed of star formation?
In the case of the
Orion Nebula -- dust.
The
entire Orion field, located about 1600
light years away, is inundated with intricate and
picturesque filaments of dust.
Opaque to visible light,
dust is created in the outer atmosphere of massive
cool stars and expelled by a strong outer
wind of particles.
The Trapezium and other forming
star clusters
are embedded in the nebula.
The intricate filaments of dust surrounding
M42 and
M43 appear brown in the
featured image, while central glowing gas is highlighted in red.
Over the next few million years much of
Orion's dust will be slowly
destroyed by the very stars now being formed, or dispersed into the
Galaxy.