This animation was produced by Walt Feimer in the Astronomy
Visualization Laboratory at the Space Telescope Science Institute.  It
begins with a "backyard" view of the sky around the constellation Orion
(by Skip Westphal, STScI) and a more detailed view of the Orion Nebula,
also known as M42 and NGC 1976, taken with the 4-meter telescope at
Kitt Peak National Observatory.

A spectacular cloud of gas surrounds several very hot stars in the star
cluster deep within the nebula.  The nebula's constituent gases include
hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, sulphur, argon, and
chlorine; the density of these gases is above the critical limit
required for stars to form within the nebula.  Visible to the naked eye
as the middle "star" in the "sword" of the constellation Orion, the
nebula is located 1500 light years from Earth.

An image taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 aboard the Hubble
Space Telescope (C.R. O'Dell, Rice University) provides a more detailed
view of the Nebula.  The final sequence, from details of the HST image,
show several protoplanetary disks or "proplyds" and finally a single
dark disk surrounding a central star.