This picture, an assembly of individual images taken by NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope, shows young stars at the center the
Orion nebula. The seemingly infinite tapestry of rich detail
revealed by Hubble shows a churning turbulent star factory set
within a maelstrom of flowing, luminescent gas. Located 1,500
light-years away, along our spiral arm of the Milky Way, the
Orion nebula is located in the middle of the sword region of the
constellation Orion the Hunter, which dominates the early winter
evening sky, at northern latitudes. The stars have formed from
collapsing clouds of interstellar gas within the last million
years. The most massive clouds have formed the brightest stars
near the center and these are so hot that they illuminate the
gas left behind after the period of star formation was complete.
The more numerous faint stars are still in the process of
collapsing under their own gravity, but have become hot enough
in their centers to be self luminous bodies. NASA, C.R. O'Dell
and S.K. Wong (Rice Unive