HUBBLE ATLAS
Protoplanetary Discs in the Orion Nebula (Messier 42 , NGC 1976 , Orion Proplyd) — image from the Hubble Space Telescope

Exoplanets

Protoplanetary Discs in the Orion Nebula

November 20, 1995 · ESA/Hubble · Messier 42 , NGC 1976 , Orion Proplyd

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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.