The Horsehead Nebula

One of the classical images of a dark nebula. This 1500 light years distant star-forming region has fired the imagination of humans since its discovery more than a century ago. Douglas Adams placed his imaginary planet Magrathea inside the Horsehead Nebula in his famous novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Most young stars are still hidden inside the nebula and will only be revealed in a few million years when the radiation pressure of the young stars blows away all the remaining gas and dust. If you can't wait that long you can have a look at this infrared image of the Horsehead Nebula which shows some of its hidden stars.

All text and articles published by Sun.org are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.