August 28, 2020
The constellations may be old, but the person celebrating beneath them is gloriously new by cosmic standards.
The Valley of Orion
Birthday · August 28, 2020
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APOD published August 28, 2020. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
This exciting and unfamiliar view of the Orion Nebula is a visualization based on astronomical data and movie rendering techniques. Up close and personal with a famous stellar nursery normally seen from 1,500 light-years away, the digitally modeled frame transitions from a visible light representation based on Hubble data on the left to infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope on the right. The perspective at the center looks along a valley over a light-year wide, in the wall of the region's giant molecular cloud. Orion's valley ends in a cavity carved by the energetic winds and radiation of the massive central stars of the Trapezium star cluster. The single frame is part of a multiwavelength, three-dimensional video that lets the viewer experience an immersive, three minute flight through the Great Nebula of Orion.