LL Ori and the Orion
Nebula
From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the
Day
This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds
features LL Orionis, interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion's stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable
star LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged Sun.
As the fast stellar wind
runs into slow moving gas a shock front is formed, analogous to the bow wave of a boat moving through water or a plane
traveling at supersonic speed. The small,
arcing, graceful structure just above and left of center is LL Ori's cosmic bow
shock, measuring about half a light-year across.
The slower gas is
flowing away from the Orion Nebula's hot central star cluster, the Trapezium, located off the upper left corner of the
picture. In three dimensions, LL Ori's wrap-around shock front is shaped like a bowl that
appears brightest when viewed along the "bottom" edge.
The beautiful picture is
part of a large mosaicview of the complex stellar nursery in Orion, filled with a
myriad of fluid shapes associated with star formation.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team
