Astronomy Picture of the Day

LL Ori and the Orion Nebula


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#83606 by @ 21.01.2006 00:00 - nach oben -
LL Ori and the Orion Nebula


Explanation:

This esthetic close-up
of cosmic clouds and stellar winds
features LL Orionis, interacting with the
Orion Nebula flow.

Adrift in Orion's
stellar nursery
and still in its formative years,
variable star LL Orionis produces a wind more
energetic than
the wind from our own
middle-aged Sun.

As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is
formed, analogous to the
bow
wave
of a boat moving through water or
a plane traveling at supersonic speed.

The small, arcing, graceful structure just above and left of
center is LL Ori's cosmic
bow shock, measuring about half a light-year across.

The slower gas is flowing away from the Orion Nebula's hot central star
cluster, the Trapezium, located off the upper left corner
of the picture.

In three
dimensions
, LL Ori's wrap-around shock front is shaped like a
bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the "bottom" edge.

The beautiful picture is part of a
large mosaic view of
the complex
stellar nursery in Orion, filled with a myriad of
fluid
shapes associated with
star formation.


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