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Updated November 26th, 2021 at 16:22 IST

NASA's Hubble celebrates Thanksgiving by sharing stunning 'Space turkey' image

NASA, on the occasion of Thanksgiving, shared Hubble's 'Space turkey' image of the Orion Nebula which is located 1,500 light-years away.

Reported by: Harsh Vardhan
NASA
Image: Twitter/@NASAHubble | Image:self
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What's the one thing that comes to mind when you think of Thanksgiving? Most likely turkey. Since the flight-less bird is a tradition of the festival, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also has followed the tradition with a shining Hubble image featuring a 'space turkey'. This image is the clearest one ever taken of the region called the 'Orion Nebula' and was snapped by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the Hubble telescope. Located 1,500 light-years away, the Orion nebula is the nearest star-forming region to Earth.

The image houses over 3,000 stars

A picture book of star formation, as NASA calls it, this region of the Orion Nebula houses over 3,000 stars of various sizes. According to NASA, four heftiest stars of the nebula reside in the bright central region of the image. These stars are called Trapezium because they are arranged in a trapezoid pattern and they are disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars by unleashing ultraviolet light and carving a cavity in the nebula. 

Out of the 3,000, some of the stars have never been seen in visible light and to make this image, astronomers used 520 Hubble images taken in five colours. The red stars, faintly visible near the bottom of the image are brown dwarfs that were observed in visible light for the first time by Hubble. Brown dwarfs, also called "failed stars", are cool objects that are too small to be ordinary stars because they cannot sustain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does. On the upper left of the image is the glow from M43, which is also called miniature Orion nebula as only one star is shaping the region through its ultraviolet light.  

Image: Twitter/@NASAHubble

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Published November 26th, 2021 at 16:22 IST

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