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 · Orion

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Hubble Space Telescope discovered four protoplanetary disks around young stars in the Orion nebula, located 1, 500 light-years away. This is one of them. 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.