The Orion Nebula: Infrared View | Subaru Telescope

The Orion Nebula: Infrared View | Subaru Telescope

Located 1,500 light years away, the Orion Nebula (Messier 42) shows a host of treasures when viewed in infrared light. There are stars in the Trapezium, an open cluster of stars at the center, that are only visible in infrared light. The orange feature above center is called the Kleinman-Low Nebula, and appears greatly affected by the newly forming central star IRc2. The blue emission in this representative color photograph is caused by hot gas ionized by the Trapezium stars. This is one of the first photographs ever taken through Japan's Subaru Telescope.

At the center of the image is the Trapezium, a group of four bright stars. Many stars seen around the Trapezium are young stars embedded in the Orion molecular cloud located behind the Orion Nebula. Many of them are seen only at infrared wavelengths. Blue, faint, and diffuse emission extending over the entire region is due to hot gas ionized by strong ultraviolet radiation emitted by the Trapezium stars. The bright bar seen in the lower left part of the image is an ionization front.

Above the Trapezium, a butterfly-like red feature is seen in the image, containing the Kleinman-Low (KL) nebula. It is deeply embedded in the Orion molecular cloud. At the center of the KL nebula is a star called IRc2 that is in the process of forming. This star is believed to be thirty times more massive than the Sun, and its activities are the cause of the large butterfly feature.

This false-color image was synthesized from three images taken with J (1.25 micron), K' (2.15 micron), and H 2 -line (2.12 micron, narrow band) filters, assigning blue for J, green for K', and red for H 2 -line images. Nine images of contiguous fields were obtained with the Subaru Telescope's Cooled Infrared Spectrograph and Camera for OHS (CISCO). It has a 2 arcmin by 2 arcmin field of view, and were combined to make this image.  Ghost (false) images from very bright stars are also visible.

The Subaru Telescope is an astronomical observation facility operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). It is located at the summit of Mauna Kea at an altitude of 4,200 meters in the U.S. state of Hawaii.

Learn more about Japan's Subaru Telescope: 
https://subarutelescope.org/en/

Credit: CISCO, Subaru 8.3-m Telescope, NAOJ
Release Date: Jan. 29, 1999

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