Messier 78 tagged posts

VISTA views Messier 78 . Credit: European Southern Observatory – ESO

In this new image of the nebula Messier 78, young stars cast a bluish pall over their surroundings, while red fledgling stars peer out from their cocoons of cosmic dust. To our eyes, most of these stars would be hidden behind the dust, but ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) sees near-infrared light, which passes right through dust. The telescope is like a giant dustbuster that lets astronomers probe deep into the heart of the stellar environment.

Messier 78, or M78, is a well-studied example of a reflection nebula. It is ~1600 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), just to the upper left of the 3 stars that make up the belt of this familiar landmark in the sky...