Orion's Hidden Fiery Ribbon Revealed in this New Image

A dramatic new image released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO)-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) in Chile reveals stunning cosmic clouds in the constellation of Orion.

The orange seen in the image is the submilliter-wavelength glow arising from the cold dust clouds and is overlaid with a view of the region taken in visible light.

Such clouds of gas and interstellar dust are the raw materials used to make stars; however, these tiny dust grains also block the view of what lies beneath them at visible wavelengths, making it notoriously difficult for scientists to observe the actual formation of the stars made in these galactic factories.

And it’s exactly here that the APEX telescope with its submillimeter-wavelength camera LABOCA, located 5,000 meters above sea level in the Chilean Andes, comes in so handy.

The new picture, however, is just a piece of a bigger complex known as the Orion Molecular Cloud located in the constellation of Orion. A region hundreds of lightyears across and located an estimated 1350 lightyears from Earth, its home to hot young stars and cold dust clouds.

The large, bright cloud in the upper right area of the image is the famed Orion Nebula, bright enough to be seen from Earth as the slightly fuzzy middle point in the sword of Orion.

Ultimately, dust clouds like this one take their shape as a result of several processes, including gravitational collapse and stellar winds, which develop when streams of gas are ejected from stars’ atmospheres and are powerful enough to shape the surrounding clouds into the convoluted forms seen here.

Astronomers have used data from APEX along with images from the Herschel Space Observatory in an effort to get a good look at the region’s embryonic stars.

Thus far, according to the ESO, they have been able to identify 15 objects that very well may be the youngest ever found, thus offering scientists a chance to witness the moment when a star begins to form.