October 10, 2023
On your birthday, the Earth completed another orbit — 584 million miles traveled since your last celebration.
Hidden Orion from Webb
Birthday · October 10, 2023
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
Free PNG · 1080 × 1350 · No account needed
Image rights and credit requirements apply when sharing or reusing imagery.
Date & occasion only
Change the year
APOD published October 10, 2023. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The Great Nebula in Orion has hidden stars. To the unaided eye in visible light, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in a representative-color composite of red and very near infrared light. It confirms with impressive detail that the Orion Nebula is a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The rollover image shows the same image in representative colors further into the near infrared. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the Trapezium - a cluster of bright stars near the nebula's center. The diffuse and filamentary glow surrounding the bright stars is mostly heated interstellar dust. Detailed inspection of these images shows an unexpectedly large number of Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects (JuMBOs), pairs of Jupiter-mass objects which might give a clue to how stars are forming. The whole Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next few million years. APOD editor to speak: in Houghton, Michigan on Thursday, October 12 at 6 pm