Journey to Nebula Messier 78's Dust Clouds in Orion | ESO

Journey to Nebula Messier 78's Dust Clouds in Orion | ESO

This zoom sequence opens with a wide-field view of the Milky Way. We close in on the constellation of Orion and as we zoom in on to a region close to Orion’s famous Belt, a fascinating region of dust and reflection nebulosity—known as Messier 78—comes into view. At the end of the zoom, submillimeter-wavelength observations from the LArge APEX BOlometer CAmera (LABOCA) camera on the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) reveal the heat glow of the dust grains, shown here in orange tones.

The final image shows the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s belt. You can see clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The submillimeter-wavelength observations, made with the APEX telescope and shown here in orange, use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed. They are overlaid on a view of the region in visible light.

Distance: ~1,400 light years

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO) / APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO) / T. Stanke et al. / Igor Chekalin / Digitized Sky Survey 2

Duration: 43 seconds
Release Date: May 2, 2012

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