1Nebula

**NEBULA **

Basic Description: Nebula - Smudges of light in the night sky that are made up of gas and that do not move or change in apearance over time.



Subtopic Description: Orion Nebula - A greenish, hydrogen-rich emission nebula that is 33 light years across.



**Orion Nebula ** The Orion Nebula, which is also known as M42, is located about 1, 600 light years from Earth, 33 light years across, and can be seen with binoculars. To the naked eye the nebula appears to be a faint star but becomes a vague patch of light when viewed throught binoculars. The bright region is divided into two sections, and the northeast portion is known seperately as M43. It contains a very young open cluster, known as the Trapezium, with many stars in their early years. This is the reason why scientists give the Orion Nebula the label as a star nursery, becuase it is a place where new stars are born. Among these stars that have been spotted are possible young brown dwarfs, the first time these objects have been in the Orion Nebula in visible light. Radiation from these stars excites the nebula to glow. The Orion Nebula includes neutral clouds of gas and dust, associations of stars, ionized volumes of gas and reflection nebulae. It is also located near the middle of the "sword" hanging from the constellation of Orion's "belt" of stars, or in our spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. Observations with powerful telescopes have found stars enclosed in dust rings, probably in the first phase of a planetary system formation. This nebula is the nearest major site to earth of massive star formation. The Orion Nebula was discovered in 1610 by a French Astronomer, Nicolaus-Claude Fabri de Peiresc ; Joseph Gaultier, another astronomer and colleague of Peiresc, was the second person to see it in the telescope. Also, the Hubble Space Telescope first observed this nebula in 1993, which led to the nebula becoming a frequent target for studies done by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Links : [|Orion Nebula Link] [|Wikipedia: Orion Nebula] [|Space telescope: Orion Nebula] [|Wikipedia: Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc]



Quick Facts : 1. Some nebula's are considered to be stellar nurseries where new stars are born. An example of a nebula such as this one is the Orion Nebula. 2. The Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebula's visible to the naked eye. 3. In older texts, the Orion Nebula is referred to as the Great Nebula, the Great Orion Nebula, or Ensis, which is the latin word for "sword". 4. Nebulas form a roughly spherical cloud that peaks in density near its core. 5. There are approxamiately seven hundred stars in various stages of formation within the Orion Nebula.

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Works Cited Engelbert, Phillis. __Astronomy and Space__: From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch. Vol 2. Detroit: Gale Publications, 1997.

"Orion Nebula". Spiritus-Temproris. 10 March. 2009. <[|www.spiritus-temporis.com/orion-nebula].>

"Orion Nebula". __The Colombia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition__. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 10 March. 2009. <[|www.Encyclopedia.com]>.

Yaunt, Lisa. __Modern Astronomy__. New York: Chelsea Habe Publishers, 2006.