Watch the Hubble Space Telescope Journeys through the Orion Nebula
Watch the Hubble Space Telescope Journeys through the Orion Nebula nasa.gov

The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, and remains in operation up until now. The images captured by this roving telescope are spectacular; it has four main instruments that can observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra.

The images you see in the video depict a vast canyon of dust and gas in the Orion Nebula created from a 3-D computer model based on observations by NASA's Hubble. This amazing 4-minute voyage was produced by science visualization specialists at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore. The video takes you on an astounding cruise through the 15-light-year-wide canyon.

During the space ride, viewers see bright orangey, pink gaseous clouds, dark nebulae, developing planetary systems, and thousands of stars, including a grouping of bright, immense stars called the Trapezium. The tour ends with a detailed look at a young circum-stellar disk, which is much like the structure from which our solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.