14 DAY TRIAL // This image from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck telescope shows an overview of the Orion constellation, including the Horsehead Nebula and the Orion Nebula. The latter is visible to the lower center of the photo.
Located about 1,500 light-years away, the formation has captivated the imagination of astronomers since ancient times, and has been investigated constantly for many centuries. One of the things that make it so interesting is that it contains areas of intense stellar formation.
These so-called stellar nurseries produce new stars from massive clouds of molecular hydrogen gas and cosmic dust. As an old galaxy, the Milky Way does not contain too many such regions, and is generally producing new stars at a moderate-to-slow pace.
However, there are some exceptions, and the stellar nurseries in the Orion constellation are some of them. Click the image for higher resolution.