The Orion Nebula is expected to bring a new treat this year. Lasting from the holiday season up to a few weeks of January, the collection of stars will be presenting one of its most colorful and brightest shows in the first quarter of 2022. The spectacular light was first captured by experts from the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
ESO Captures Bright Glow of Orion's Flame Nebula
TOPSHOT - This long exposure picture taken on December 23, 2017, shows the Orion Nebula, as seen from Bago, located 91 kilometers northeast of Yangon.
The Orion's latest light show was confirmed by scientists as natural activities inside the nebula, and not some threatening explosion or burning manifestation brought by any cosmic collision inside the region. The 'fire' on the image is known as the Orion's Flame Nebula, taken through the advanced imaging technique from ESO's famous facility located at Chile's Chajnantor Plateau called the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment or APEX.
Former ESO astronomy expert Thomas Stanke was the specialist responsible for capturing the unexpected astral gift this new year. In the image, the bright Flame Nebula was charted in its glowing form side by side with the little Horsehead Nebula. During his time on ESO, Stanke and their team managed to locate and examine the said region for studies through the APEX instrument called SuperCam.
Stanke said in a report by EurekAlert that most astronomers follow a tradition that involves an observation over the space where Orion sits whenever a new imaging device is developed and made available for use. The scientists believe that through this conventional practice, they will discover more interesting aspects from the nebula that has not been located in the initial analysis.
Because of the survey they did back in the previous years, Stanke and their team indeed captured an image that was only developed for the first time. The detailed investigation from the new photograph of the Orion's Flame Nebula was published today in the journal Astrophysics of Galaxy, titled "The APEX Large CO Heterodyne Orion Legacy Survey (ALCOHOLS). I. Survey overview."
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Other Lights in the Latest Orion Imaging
Orion is among the most common celestial regions that even kids know of. The place was observed multiple times in numerous studies, and most of their findings suggest that Orion houses many cosmic objects, stellar bodies, and even molecular clouds. The nebula is also filled with hydrogen, one of the basic ingredients to form planets and stars.
Orion Nebula is located just 1300 to 1600 lightyears away from our planet, making it the closest collection of molecular clouds to the sun. The region is considered by our scientists as the most active among the many stellar nurseries placed on the outskirts of the solar system. This claim was evident in the recently developed image of the Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula, located at the heart of Orion itself. The emission seen on the image is a cluster of newborn stellar bodies that contain high-energy radiation. This causes the gas in the region to somehow glow.
The frame of Flame Nebula included other alluring presentations including the reflection of the nearby stars and gas in the Messier 78 and the NGC 2071. A smaller nebula, called the Cow Nebula, was also discovered for the first time through the surveys that Stanke's team have conducted.
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