At the Heart of
Orion
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
Near the center of this sharp cosmic portrait, at the heart of the Orion Nebula, are four hot, massive stars known as the Trapezium.
Gathered within a region
about 1.5 light-years in radius, they dominate the core of the dense Orion
Nebula Star Cluster.
Ultraviolet ionizing
radiation from the Trapezium stars, mostly from the brightest star Theta-1 Orionis C powers the complex star forming region's
entire visible glow.
About three million
years old, the Orion Nebula Cluster was even more compact in its younger years
and a recent dynamical study indicates that runaway stellar collisions at an earlier age may have formed a black
hole with more than 100 times the mass of the Sun.
The presence of a black
hole within the cluster could explain the observed high velocities of the
Trapezium stars.
The Orion Nebula's
distance of some 1500 light-years would make it the closest known black hole to
planet Earth.
Credit: Image Data - Hubble Legacy Archive, Processing - Robert
Gendler