Merrillville Community Planetarium
Bringing the Universe to the Merrillville Schools and Northwest Indiana

Stars Forming in Orion's Head

Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered many “infant” or new stars forming in the area of the head of Orion (the Hunter) located about 1,200 light-years away. Astronomers believe shockwaves from a supernova explosion of a massive star 3 million years ago may have triggered the formation of the new stars. The image from Spitzer shows high and low mass stars, brown dwarfs, and a dark dust cloud. The top of the cloud shows very young stars embedded in a cocoon of gas and dust.