Orion Nebula - M42 - M43 - The Great Nebula in Orion - Located 1500...

Orion Nebula - M42 - M43 - The Great Nebula in Orion - Located 1500 years - light, the Orion Nebula is the closest region to the formation of stars of the Sun. Image obtained from the 2.2 meter MPG/ESO telescope of the La Silla Observatory. The Orion Nebula is the greatest of all HII clouds visible from our location within the Milky Way. With a gaseous repository of 10,000 suns, and illuminated by a cluster of hot young stars, the clouds of M42 glow with fantastic colors and shapes, giving us a birds eye view of one of the greatest star forming nurseries in our part of the galaxy. At a distance of 1500 light years, the Orion nebula is the nearest star - forming region to the Sun. This new image of the Orion Nebula was captured using the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2 - metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory, Chile. This image is a composite of several exposures taken through a total of five different filters. Light that passed through a red filter, as well as light from a filter that shows the glowing hydrogen gas, is colored red. Light in the yellow - green part of the spectrum is colored green, blue light is colored blue and light that passed through an ultraviolet filter has been colored purple. The exposure times were about 52 minutes through each filter