Orion Nebula - Hubble Space Telescope Mug

NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have teamed up to expose the chaos that baby stars are creating 1,500 light-years away in a cosmic cloud called the Orion Nebula.

Orion the Hunter is the most noticeable of all constellations in the Milky Way. The three stars of Orion’s Belt jump out at you as a short, straight row of medium-bright stars, midway between Orion’s two brightest stars, Betelgeuse and Rigel. Once you find the Belt stars, you can also locate the Orion Nebula, otherwise known as M42. It is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. When you look at it, you’re gazing toward a stellar nursery, a place where new stars are born. At 1,344 ± 20 light-years away it is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.