399 Nursery of Stars

The Orion Nebula is the most fascinating thing in the world, methinks. And it is by no means a static celestial object - inside of it rage "Stellar Winds" sending stupendous shock waves through the gas clouds, compacting them almost to the point of gravitational collapse. It is also a well-known stellar nursery, continuously giving birth to new stars. Allow us another quote: "In this bowl of stars we see the entire star formation history of Orion printed into the features of the nebula: arcs, blobs, pillars, and rings of dust that resemble cigar smoke." (Massimo Robberto) From Darkroastedblend

And Orion is big ... very big (as the picture below clearly shows); behold its grandeur.

Just think: We're looking at an area spanning twenty light-years from top to bottom; so that’s the distance light travels in about twenty years. Light travels from Earth to the Sun in about eight minutes.

I like all things space, I have blogged about space before, and the sun; furthermore, I have an essay on COSMOS in my book with no title, instead three definitions for the term en.light.en.ment