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Back Protoplanetary Discs in the Orion Nebula

Protoplanetary Discs in the Orion Nebula


Depicts: M42, NGC 1976, The Great Nebula in Orion
Copyright: Mark McCaughrean (Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy), C. Robert O'Dell (Rice University), and NASA

These are Hubble Space Telescope images of four newly discovered protoplanetary disks around young stars in the Orion nebula, located 1,500 light-years away. Gas and dust disks, long suspected by astronomers to be an early stage of planetary formation, can be directly seen in visible light by Hubble.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
10-Feb-2026 15:14 UT

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