apodzh

1995.7.3『猎户座大星云』#APOD历史存档#

猎户座大星云M42可以在夜空中耀眼明亮的猎户座「腰带」上的三颗宝石的左下方找到。这是离我们最近的恒星宝宝「保育箱」——年轻的恒星形成的地方。聚集的气体（氢气和氦气）和尘埃在星云里被它们自身的重力挤在一起直到它们撞击形成恒星。我们在这里看到的一些部分被星云遮挡的恒星，年龄只有10万年，和我们的太阳的年龄50亿光年相比好似婴儿一般。

（M42是最著名最美丽的星云之一，不过可能17年前的网络图片质量有限(＞﹏＜)。相信越往后会越高清。）

The Great Nebula in Orion, M42, can be found on the night sky just below and to the left of the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. This nebula is one of the closest stellar nurseries - where young stars are being formed even now. Clumps of gas (mostly hydrogen and helium) and dust in the nebula are squeezed together by their own gravity until they collapse and form stars. Some stars we can see here partially obscured by the nebula, are only about 100,000 years old - just babies compared to the 5 billion (5,000,000,000) years of our Sun.