Trapezium Star Cluster in The Orion Nebula | Hubble Space Telescope

Trapezium Star Cluster in The Orion Nebula | Hubble Space Telescope

Appearing like glistening precious stones, the Trapezium cluster's central region is here seen through the eyes of the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. All of the celestial objects in the Trapezium were born together in this hotbed of star formation. The cluster is named for the trapezoidal alignment of those central massive stars.

Probing deep within a neighborhood stellar nursery, the Hubble Space Telescope uncovered a swarm of newborn brown dwarfs. The orbiting observatory's near-infrared camera revealed about 50 of these objects throughout the Orion Nebula's Trapezium cluster about 1,500 light-years from Earth.

This stellar nursery, Messier 42, popularly called the Orion Nebula, has been known to many cultures throughout human history. The nebula is only 1,500 light-years away, making it the closest large star-forming region to Earth and giving it a relatively bright apparent magnitude of 4. Because of its brightness and prominent location just below Orion’s belt, M42 can be spotted with the naked eye, while offering an excellent peek at stellar birth for those with telescopes. It is best observed during January.

Credit: K.L. Luhman (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.); and G. Schneider, E. Young, G. Rieke, A. Cotera, H. Chen, M. Rieke, R. Thompson (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.) and NASA/ESA

Release Date: August 24, 2000

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