Where is the orion nebula
M42, The Great Orion Nebula
this is what winter solstice sunrise
looks like at our place winter has
officially arrived
this annual late December event also
coincides with the appearance of one of
the most interesting deep space objects
m42 the great Orion Nebula centered in
the constellation Orion this dramatic
object rises over the East horizon two
hours after sunset m42 is a stellar
nursery turn your binoculars on this
cosmic cloud and you will be witnessing
the birth of stars to observe him 42
locate the constellation Orion
Orion is visible from December to
February for most regions of Earth the
constellation gets its name from the
ancient Greeks Orion the Hunter the most
easily recognized feature of the
constellation are these three bright
stars Orion's belt once you have located
Orion's belt you will notice this row of
fainter stars hanging below the belt
this group of stars represents a Ryan's
sword these stars also locate m42
study the area with a pair of binoculars
and you will notice that the center
stars are hazy clearly defined you are
actually seeing the glow of the great
Orion Nebula a small telescope will
expose more detail
images from large telescopes like the
Hubble reveal even more detail this huge
nebula m42
is illuminated by hundreds of embryonic
stars newly formed from the vast clouds
of dust and hydrogen stars are created
from the particles that make up the
cloud of a nebula like m42 astronomers
call a star-forming nebula like this a
molecular cloud the force that starts
the process of star formation is gravity
Isaac Newton's law of universal
gravitation explains the process his
elegant law states that two objects
attract one another with a force
proportional to the product of their
masses m1 times m2 divided by the square
of the distance between them R squared
this means that any two particles in a
molecular cloud attract one another this
attraction creates gravitational
potential energy the particles start to
move towards each other
accelerating through space they gain
kinetic energy upon collision this
kinetic energy becomes heat energy if
the two particles now stay close
together this increased mass will
attract even more particles over
millions of years this area of the cloud
will become denser and more massive
precipitating a cascade of particles
accelerating towards this growing mass
the collisions will cause the core of
this region to heat even more eventually
reaching a critical temperature of 10
million degrees Kelvin at this point
atomic particles fused together
releasing a torrent of energy this is
nuclear fusion a storage both
we have come a long way in our
understanding of the forces driving our
evolving universe and it's exciting to
think that we can find and observe an
object like m42 and actually understand
what is happening there we have more
astronomy related videos and projects at
our website Hilah Road comm or visit our
YouTube channel science online
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