Blueshift - August 14, 2009: Making Hubble's Great Orion Mosaic

The Hubble Space Telescope is famous for its beautiful images of celestial objects - from planets in our own Solar System to far away galaxies. The Orion Nebula (known to astronomers as Messier object 42, or M42) is a cloud of dust, gas, and stars. It's actually visible with the naked eye, located in the "sword" of the constellation Orion. The nebula contains both an open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, and many stellar nurseries. Because of this, it's of interest to scientists who want to learn more about how stars are born. And we don't mean the kind out in Hollywood! (We know, that's a terrible joke.) Astronomer Massimo Robert from the Space Telescope Science Institute has dedicated a lot of his research to the Orion Nebula, and he talked to us about the creation of a breathtaking mosaic of it made with data from the Hubble Space Telescope.