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National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Goddard Space Flight Center

Sun-Earth Day 2009: Our Sun Yours to Discover.

Sun-Earth Day 2009: Our Sun Yours to Discover

IMAGE GALLERY

This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, represents the sharpest view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. Astronomers used 520 Hubble images, taken in five colors, to make this picture. They also added ground-based photos to fill out the nebula.
Orion Nebula

This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, represents the sharpest view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. Astronomers used 520 Hubble images, taken in five colors, to make this picture. They also added ground-based photos to fill out the nebula. This image was taken from Hubblesite.org

[Sun-Earth Day Note: By observing other stars in our universe, we learn more about our own star, the Sun.]

NASA Fact

The most powerful solar flare in the last 500 years occurred on September 2, 1859 and was sighted by two astronomers who happened to be looking at the sun at exactly the right time!