- NASA’s latest “Image of the Day” for 2020 shows the Orion Nebula, located 1,500 light-years from Earth.
- The Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes have captured the stunning, colorful image.
- Nebulae are gigantic gas and dust clouds where new stars are born.
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NASA decided to share interstellar fireworks to end an unforgettable year.
The agency posts a “picture of the day” every day and the final 2020 image did not disappoint.
A canvas of color, NASA’s December 31 image of the day shows a composite image of the Orion Nebula captured by the Hubble Space and Spitzer Space Telescopes.
It is more than 1,500 light-years away from Earth.
Nebulae like these are interstellar nurseries – giant clouds of gas and dust in space that rock young stars as they are born. Some nebulae form as stars die: When a star’s core cools, it begins to shed its outer layers, which spread out and form gaseous clouds.
A rainbow canvas
To the naked eye, nebulae would not really look like rainbow cloths dotted with dots of light (usually showing new stars).
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has captured two nebulae, or clouds of gas and dust. On the left, baby stars (the red and yellow dots) are born in a dark clearing in the nebula.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
When space telescopes such as Hubble image the hydrogen, sulfur and carbon molecules that make up nebulae like Orion, they do not capture color. Instead, Hubble records light particles, which NASA can then view through different filters that only let in certain wavelengths of color. Then they assign color to the particles that pass through those filters (for example, light that passed through the red filter turns red.)
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has captured this image of the Helix Nebula, located in the constellation of Aquarius, about 700 light-years from Earth.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. from Arizona
By combining images of the same nebula viewed with different filters, the agency can create a composite color image as shown above.
“We often use color as a tool, whether it is to enhance the details of an object or to visualize what normally cannot be seen with the human eye,” NASA said.
There are about 3,000 nebulae in our galaxy.
The closest known nebula to our planet is the Helix Nebula, the cosmic remnant of a dying star. It’s about half the distance from Earth like the Orion Nebula – 700 light years (so if you were to travel at the speed of light, it would take 700 years to get there).
The Hubble Space Telescope has been imaging nebulae for 30 years, and these images help scientists learn more about how these cosmic clouds evolve, or even dim and shrink, over time.