Orion in Miniature

A massive star is illuminating this small region, called M43, and sculpting the landscape of dust and gas. Astronomers call the area a miniature Orion Nebula because of its small size and the single star that is shaping it. The Orion Nebula itself is much larger and has four hefty stars that are carving the dust-and-gas terrain.

About the colours

This image is a composite mosaic of many separate expposures made by the ACS instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope and the ESO La Silla 2.2 meter telescope using several different filters isolating the light of specific elements or of specific broad wavelength ranges. The color arises by assigning different hues (colors), to each monochromatic image. In this case, the colors are:Blue: ACS F435W (B) + ESO BB#B/99_ESO842 BGreen: ACS F555W (V) + ESO NB#OIII/8_ESO859 [O III]Red-orange: ACS F658N (Halpha) Red: ACS F775W (i) + F850LP (z) + ESO NB#Halpha/7_ESO856 + ESO NB#SIIr/8_ESO857 [S II]

About the data

The Hubble image was created from HST data from proposal 10246 : M. Robberto (STScI/ESA), C.R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University), L.A. Hillenbrand (Caltech), M. Simon (SUNY Stony Brook), P. McCullough (STScI), J. Krist (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), F. Palla (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri), M. Romaniello (ESO – Germany), J. Najita (NOAO/AURA), E.D. Feigelson (The Pennsylvania State University), R. Makidon (STScI), J. Stauffer (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); N. Panagia, I.N. Reid, D.R. Soderblom, and E. Bergeron (STScI); and K.G. Stassun (Vanderbilt University).

The Hubble data was superimposed onto a ground-based image taken from the 2.2 meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory – La Silla.