#The Orion Molecular Cloud Complex

[dopescissorscashwagon]

"Questions" The Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

Taken from a remote part of New Zealand's Southern Alps.

📸 by Paul Wilson @paulwilsonimage

[silvereyedowl]

(source: 1, 2)

Celestial Lightsaber

[garyeason]

Two striking areas of nebulosity in the Orion molecular cloud complex. The Flame Nebula is a bright area of glowing hydrogen overlaid with clouds of dark dust and gas. The distinctive Horsehead comprises dark areas of dust silhouetted by the light from stars behind it. To the lower left of it is a reflection nebula, NGC 2023. The most brilliant star is Alnitak, one of the three that make up Orion's Belt.

[spacewonder19]

Orion molecular cloud complex © Michele Guzzini

[spacevoyagerx]

HH 45

HH 45 is a region within the Running Man Nebula, which is part of the larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

The Running Man Nebula, also known as NGC 1977, is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Orion. It gets its name from its appearance, which resembles a running figure.

HH 45 specifically refers to a Herbig-Haro object, which is a type of astronomical object formed by the interaction of a young stellar object (like a protostar) with the surrounding gas and dust.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and J. Bally (University of Colorado at Boulder); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

[silvereyedowl]

[source]

Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka

Credits: Mohammad Nouroozi

[apod]

2024 September 24

NGC 6727: The Rampaging Baboon Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Alpha Zhang & Ting Yu

Explanation: This dusty region is forming stars. Part of a sprawling molecular cloud complex that resembles, to some, a rampaging baboon, the region is a relatively close by 500 light-years away toward the constellation Corona Australis. That's about one third the distance of the more famous stellar nursery known as the Orion Nebula. Mixed with bright nebulosities, the brown dust clouds effectively block light from more distant background stars in the Milky Way and obscure from view embedded stars still in the process of formation. The eyes of the dust creature in the featured image are actually blue reflection nebulas cataloged as NGC 6726, 6727, 6729, and IC 4812, while the red mouth glows with light emitted by hydrogen gas. Just to the upper left of the baboon's head is NGC 6723, a whole globular cluster of stars nearly 30,000 light years in the distance.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240924.html

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

Found along Orion's sword just north of the bright Orion Nebula complex, these reflection nebulae are also associated with Orion's giant molecular cloud about 1,500 light-years away, but are dominated by the characteristic blue color of interstellar dust reflecting light from hot young stars.

Image Credit: Daniel Stern

[quiltofstars]

The Orion Nebula, M42 // Colm O'Dwyer

In this deeper image of the Orion Nebula, you can more easily see the surrounding gas and dust beyond the bright emission nebula. Indeed, the Orion Nebula is part of the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex. This complex is a star-forming region and is only about 12 million years old. Many nebulae, aside from the Orion Nebula, are part of this star-forming complex.

[aspaceinthecosmos]

TRICK OR TREAT !!!

happy halloween! you get the orion molecular cloud complex!

[talonabraxas]

Stars of Orion Talon Abraxas

Orion’s Belt consists of three exceptionally hot and massive blue stars, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. The stars are evenly spaced and form a more or less straight line, which makes them easy to identify. Two of the three stars are supergiants.

The stars formed in the same molecular cloud and are roughly the same age. Alnitak and Mintaka, the leftmost and rightmost stars of Orion’s Belt, lie at a similar distance, about 1,200 light-years from the Sun, while Alnilam, the central star of the Belt, is much more distant. It lies approximately 2,000 light-years away. This means that, even though Alnitak and Mintaka appear closer to Alnilam in the sky, they are in fact closer to each other.

The three stars are part of the Orion OB1b subgroup of the Orion OB1 association. They were formed in the larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, the nearest massive star-forming region to Earth.

alnilam,alnitak and mintaka

Alnitak

Alnitak, Zeta Orionis (ζ Ori), is the leftmost star of Orion’s Belt. It is the primary star in a triple star system located approximately 1,260 light-years away.

The three components of the Zeta Orionis system are hot, luminous blue O- and B-type stars. They have a combined apparent magnitude of 1.77. The individual components shine at magnitudes 2.08, 4.28, and 4.01.

The primary component, Zeta Orionis Aa, is formally known as Alnitak. The name comes from the Arabic word an-niṭāq, meaning “girdle.” It was historically also spelled Al Nitak or Alnitah.

Alnitak is a hot blue supergiant of the spectral type O9.5Iab. It has a mass 33 times that of the Sun and a radius 20 times solar. With an effective temperature of about 29,500 K, it shines with 250,000 solar luminosities. The star’s estimated age is only 6.4 million years.

Alnitak is the fifth brightest star in Orion and the 31st brightest star in the sky. It is slightly fainter than its Orion’s Belt neighbour Alnilam, but it outshines Mintaka.

Alnitak is the brightest O-type star in the sky. O-type stars are the hottest, bluest, and most massive types of stars, as well as the most short-lived. Because of their high mass, they burn through their supply of hydrogen faster than Sun-like stars. Even though it has only a fraction of the Sun’s age, Alnitak is already in the final stages of its life cycle. When it reaches the end, it will go out as a spectacular supernova.

Alnitak forms a close binary star system with a blue subgiant with the stellar classification B1IV. The binary star is sometimes referred to as Alnitak A.

The secondary component, Zeta Orionis Ab (Alnitak Ab), is not as evolved, but it has also come to the end of its main sequence lifetime. The star was only discovered in 1998. With a mass 14 times that of the Sun, it is also a supernova candidate. It has a radius 7.2 times solar and is 32,000 times more luminous than the Sun, with a surface temperature of 29,000 K. Alnitak Ab is a little older than its more massive companion, with an estimated age of 7.2 million years.

Alnitak Aa and Alnitak Ab orbit each other with a period of 2,687.3 days. They are separated by only 35.9 milliarcseconds, corresponding to a physical distance of only 11 astronomical units (Earth-Sun distances). The secondary component cannot be resolved visually even in the largest of telescopes. It can only be detected interferometrically and spectroscopically.

The third component, Zeta Orionis B, orbits the main pair with a period 1,508.6 years at a separation of 2.728 arcseconds. It is a blue giant star of the spectral type B0III.

There is a 9th magnitude star, sometimes called Alnitak C, that appears in the same line of sight. However, it is unclear whether it is physically related to the system or just an optical companion.

Photo taken by Rogelio Bernal Andreo in October 2010 of the Orion constellation showing the surrounding nebulae of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. Also captured is the red supergiant Betelgeuse (top left) and the famous Belt of Orion composed of the OB stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. To the bottom right is the star Rigel. The red crescent shape is Barnard’s Loop. The photograph appeared as the Astronomy Picture of the Day on October 23, 2010. Image: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Alnilam

Alnilam, Epsilon Orionis (ε Ori), is the middle star of Orion’s Belt. It is a single star located approximately 2,000 light-years away. It has the stellar classification B0 Ia, indicating a luminous blue supergiant.

Even though Alnilam is the most distant of the three stars, it appears the brightest because it is the most massive and therefore the most intrinsically luminous of the Belt stars. Shining at magnitude 1.69, Alnilam is the fourth brightest star in Orion and the 29th-brightest star in the sky. Among the 30 brightest stars, only Deneb is more distant. The luminary of Cygnus lies 2,615 light-years away.

Alnilam and Deneb (Alpha Cygni) belong to the same class of variable stars, the Alpha Cygni variables. These are A- and B-type supergiant stars that experience non-radial pulsations. Some parts of their surfaces are contracting while others simultaneously expand. The pulsations cause the brightness to vary by about 0.1 magnitudes. Alnilam’s brightness has been observed to vary from magnitude 1.64 to 1.74.

The star’s spectrum also varies, possibly because of the dramatic mass loss that it is experiencing. Alnilam is losing mass about 20 million times more rapidly than the Sun. The mass loss is caused by the strong stellar winds that may reach up to 2,000 km/s.

The name Alnilam is derived from the Arabic al-niẓām, meaning “the string (of pearls).” It was historically also spelled Alnihan and Alnitam. The name may be related to the word nilam, meaning “sapphire.”

Alnilam has between 40 and 44 times the mass of the Sun and a radius of 32.4 solar radii. With an effective temperature of 27,500 K, it is 537,000 times more luminous than the Sun. It has an estimated age of 5.7 million years.

Even though it is a young star, Alnilam is already approaching the end of its life. It may evolve into a red supergiant more luminous than Betelgeuse over the next million years and will ultimately go out as a supernova.

Mintaka

Mintaka, Delta Orionis (δ Ori), is the rightmost star of Orion’s Belt (leftmost when seen from the southern hemisphere). With an apparent magnitude of 2.23, it is the seventh brightest star in Orion and the 73rd brightest star in the sky. It is the faintest star of Orion’s Belt and the only one that is not a supergiant.

The name Mintaka is derived from the Arabic manṭaqa, meaning “belt.”

Mintaka is the primary component in a star system located approximately 1,200 light-years away. It is a hot blue bright giant of the spectral type O9.5II. The star is a supernova candidate with a mass 24 times that of the Sun. It has a radius of 16.5 solar radii and a luminosity 190,000 times that of the Sun.

The primary component (Delta Ori Aa1) is part of a triple star system that also contains a hot blue B-type main sequence star (Delta Ori Aa2) and a B-type subgiant star (Delta Ori Ab). The closer companion, Delta Orionis Aa2, has a mass of 8.4 solar masses and a radius 6.5 times that of the Sun. With an effective temperature of about 25,600 K, it shines with 16,000 solar luminosities.

Delta Orionis Ab has a mass 22.5 times that of the Sun and a radius of 10.4 solar radii. It is 63,000 times more luminous than the Sun with a surface temperature of 28,400 K. It is separated by 0.26 arcseconds from the main pair and orbits the two stars with a period of 400 years or more.

All three stars are exceptionally fast spinners, with projected rotational velocities of 130 km/s (Mintaka), 150 km/s (Delta Ori Aa2), and 220 km/s (Delta Ori Ab).

Mintaka and Delta Ori Aa2 orbit each other with a period of 5.732436 days. The system is classified as an eclipsing binary star. The two stars periodically eclipse each other as they orbit, causing the system’s brightness to decrease. When the primary component eclipses the secondary, the brightness drops from magnitude 2.23 to 2.29, and when the primary star is eclipsed by the secondary, the brightness decreases to magnitude 2.35.

A fourth component, Delta Orionis B, is a 14th-magnitude star that may be related to the system, but its properties are not understood well enough to confirm this.

Delta Orionis C, catalogued as HD 36485, is another hot B-type main sequence star. It shines at magnitude 6.85 and consists of a spectroscopic binary pair. The two components orbit each other with a period of about 30 days.

[tatmanblue]

Euclid’s view of the Horsehead Nebula by European Space Agency Via Flickr: Euclid shows us a spectacularly panoramic and detailed view of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33 and part of the constellation Orion. At approximately 1375 light-years away, the Horsehead – visible as a dark cloud shaped like a horse’s head – is the closest giant star-forming region to Earth. It sits just to the south of star Alnitak, the easternmost of Orion’s famous three-star belt, and is part of the vast Orion molecular cloud. Many other telescopes have taken images of the Horsehead Nebula, but none of them are able to create such a sharp and wide view as Euclid can with just one observation. Euclid captured this image of the Horsehead in about one hour, which showcases the mission's ability to very quickly image an unprecedented area of the sky in high detail. In Euclid’s new observation of this stellar nursery, scientists hope to find many dim and previously unseen Jupiter-mass planets in their celestial infancy, as well as young brown dwarfs and baby stars. “We are particularly interested in this region, because star formation is taking place in very special conditions,” explains Eduardo Martin Guerrero de Escalante of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Tenerife and a legacy scientist for Euclid. These special conditions are caused by radiation coming from the very bright star Sigma Orionis, which is located above the Horsehead, just outside Euclid’s field-of-view (the star is so bright that the telescope would see nothing else if it pointed directly towards it). Ultraviolet radiation from Sigma Orionis causes the clouds behind the Horsehead to glow, while the thick clouds of the Horsehead itself block light from directly behind it; this makes the head look dark. The nebula itself is made up largely of cold molecular hydrogen, which gives off very little heat and no light. Astronomers study the differences in the conditions for star formation between the dark and bright clouds. The star Sigma Orionis itself belongs to a group of more than a hundred stars, called an open cluster. However, astronomers don’t have the full picture of all the stars belonging to the cluster. “Gaia has revealed many new members, but we already see new candidate stars, brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects in this Euclid image, so we hope that Euclid will give us a more complete picture,” adds Eduardo. The data in this image were taken in about one hour of observation. This colour image was obtained by combining VIS data and NISP photometry in Y and H bands; its size is 8800 x 8800 pixels. VIS and NISP enable observing astronomical sources in four different wavelength ranges. Aesthetics choices led to the selection of three out of these four bands to be cast onto the traditional Red-Green-Blue colour channels used to represent images on our digital screens (RGB). The blue, green, red channels capture the Universe seen by Euclid around the wavelength 0.7, 1.1, and 1.7 micron respectively. This gives Euclid a distinctive colour palette: hot stars have a white-blue hue, excited hydrogen gas appears in the blue channel, and regions rich in dust and molecular gas have a clear red hue. Distant redshifted background galaxies appear very red. In the image, the stars have six prominent spikes due to how light interacts with the optical system of the telescope in the process of diffraction. Another signature of Euclid special optics is the presence of a few, very faint and small round regions of a fuzzy blue colour. These are normal artefacts of complex optical systems, so-called ‘optical ghost’; easily identifiable during data analysis, they do not cause any problem for the science goals. The cutout from the full view of the Horsehead Nebula is at the high resolution of the VIS instrument. This is nine times better than the definition of NISP that was selected for the full view; this was done for the practical reason of limiting the format of the full image to a manageable size for downloading. The cutout fully showcases the power of Euclid in obtaining extremely sharp images over a large region of the sky in one single pointing. Although this image represents only a small part of the entire colour view, the same quality as shown here is available over the full field. The full view of the Horsehead Nebula at the highest definition can be explored on ESASky. [Image description] This square astronomical image is divided horizontally by a waving line between a white-orange cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively blue-purple-pink upper portion. From the nebula in the bottom half of the image, an orange cloud shaped like a horsehead sticks out. In the bottom left of the image, a white round glow is visible. The clouds from the bottom half of the image shine purple/blue light into the upper half. The top of the image shows the black expanse of space. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing stars of varying sizes and colours. Blue stars are younger and red stars are older. Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

[spacepiratenemo]

#mochi1_kdtiys !!! Imma post this now, because here in Germany it's early morning and Mochi sure ain't awake yet, so she check this out when she wakes up ❤💙💜

I had a lot of fun doing this DTIYS, cuz that stuff right there is right up my alley. It's my drugs, my essence and drawing dear Meissa, head-star of Orion, one of my favourite constellations is an honour 😍

I hope I could do Meissa justice and the holo-effect is just right ^^ And ofc, I had to add the actual Orion Constellation as a detail. Meissa be creating stars like a space goddess 😘

Some space facts: It's actually a binary system; classified as an O8 III star, indicating it is an O-type star with giant luminosity, approx. 1100 LY from Earth. Lambda Orionis Ring or the Meissa Ring is also a large molecular cloud complex that is also an H II region, showing active formation of new stars. So, Meissa creating new stars here, ain't even wrong 👽🖤

Meissa is by @mochigyun 🤍 Art by me 🖤

[joshuaboakley]

This dusty region is forming stars. Part of a sprawling molecular cloud complex that resembles, to some, a rampaging baboon, the region is a relatively close by 500 light-years away toward the constellation Corona Australis. That’s about one third the distance of the more famous stellar nursery known as the Orion Nebula. Mixed with bright nebulosities, the brown dust clouds effectively block…

[xpuigc-bloc]

Horsehead Nebula (NIRCam image)

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.

Webb’s new images show part of the sky in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1300 light-years away.

The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows because it is illuminated by a nearby hot star. The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of thick clumps of material that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead has about five million years left before it too disintegrates. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure.

The Horsehead Nebula is a well-known photon-dominated region, or PDR. In such a region ultraviolet light from young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionised gas surrounding the massive stars and the clouds in which they are born. This ultraviolet radiation strongly influences the gas chemistry of these regions and acts as the most important source of heat.

These regions occur where interstellar gas is dense enough to remain neutral, but not dense enough to prevent the penetration of far-ultraviolet light from massive stars. The light emitted from such PDRs provides a unique tool to study the physical and chemical processes that drive the evolution of interstellar matter in our galaxy, and throughout the Universe from the early era of vigorous star formation to the present day.

Owing to its proximity and its nearly edge-on geometry, the Horsehead Nebula is an ideal target for astronomers to study the physical structures of PDRs and the evolution of the chemical characteristics of the gas and dust within their respective environments, and the transition regions between them. It is considered one of the best objects in the sky to study how radiation interacts with interstellar matter.

This image was captured with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instrument.

[Image description: At the bottom of the image a small portion of the Horsehead Nebula is seen close-in, as a curved wall of thick, smoky gas and dust. Above the nebula various distant stars and galaxies can be seen up to the top of the image. One star is very bright and large, with six long diffraction spikes that cross the image. The background fades from a dark red colour above the nebula to black.]

#Horsehead Nebula (NIRCam image)

#Credit:

#ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, K. Misselt (University of Arizona) and A. Abergel (IAS/University Paris-Saclay, CNRS)

[johnlyngfr]

Thé Horsehead Nebula appears as a dark silhouette in the vast Orion Molecular Cloud Complex behind it. It is too faint to see without a telescope. It was first identified by the Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming in 1888. The deep red colour is caused by the ionized hydrogen that dominates this area. It is about 1,400 light-years away. This image is a composite of 54 photos, where each is a 3 minute exposure. I used an special filter to highlight the ionized hydrogen. I captured this image from my balcony in Strasbourg France in early February 2023. #horseheadnebula #barnard33 #ngc2023 #orionmolecularcloudcomplex #orionbelt #astronomy #astrophotography #astronomiefrance #astropgotographie (at Strasbourg, France) https://www.instagram.com/p/Coh7ppvstFv/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=