Orion Nebula - Happy Birthday Card

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic greetings card showing a wide-field view of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), lying about 1350 light-years from Earth and taken with the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The new telescope’s huge field of view allows the whole nebula and its surroundings to be imaged in a single picture and its infrared vision also means that it can peer deep into the normally hidden dusty regions and reveal the curious antics of the very active young stars buried there. This image was created from images taken through Z, J and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. The exposure times were ten minutes per filter. The image covers a region of sky about one degree by 1.5 degrees. Image code: orionneb Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.