Rosette Nebula

This video offers a close-up look at a small portion of the magnificent Rosette Nebula, as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Though Hubble cannot take three-dimensional pictures, this video is a visualization treatment of the photo to give a sense of depth with foreground and background stars and dust clouds separated in space. This vast star-forming region lies at one end of a giant molecular cloud in the constellation Monoceros. The nebula is located about 5,000 light-years away. Intense radiation from the young stars inside a cluster in the nebula causes the gasses to glow. The colors come from the presence of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.