NASA has shared interstellar fireworks to end 2020. The Orion Nebula looks like a rainbow canvas dotted with points of light.

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Orion nebula
A composite image of the Orion Nebula, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. NASA / JPL-Caltech STScI

  • NASA’s latest “Image of the Day” for 2020 shows the Orion Nebula, located 1,500 light years from Earth.

  • The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes captured the stunning and colorful image.

  • Nebulae are giant clouds of gas and dust in which new stars are born.

  • Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

NASA has decided to share interstellar fireworks to end an unforgettable year.

The agency publishes a “picture of the day” every day, and the final 2020 picture did not disappoint.

A colorful canvas, NASA’s December 31 Image of the Day represents a composite image of the Orion Nebula, captured by the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes.

It is located more than 1,500 light years from Earth.

Nebulae like this are interstellar nurseries – giant clouds of gas and dust in space that cradle toddler stars at the time of their birth. Some nebulae form as stars die: when a star’s core cools, it begins to shed its outer layers, which disperse to form gaseous clouds.

A rainbow canvas

To the naked eye, nebulae wouldn’t look like rainbow webs dotted with points of light (which usually show new stars forming).

Cepheus nebula
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has captured two nebulae, or clouds of gas and dust. On the left, baby stars (the red and yellow dots) are born in a dark glade of the nebula. NASA / JPL-Caltech

When space telescopes like the Hubble imagine the molecules of hydrogen, sulfur, and carbon that make up nebulae like Orion, they don’t capture color. Rather, Hubble records particles of light, which NASA can then view through different filters that only let in certain wavelengths of color. Then they assign a color to the particles that pass through those filters (light that has passed through the red filter is assigned a red color, for example).

Helix nebula
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope captured this image of the Helix Nebula, located in the constellation Aquarius, about 700 light years from Earth. NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. from Arizona

By combining images of the same nebula seen with different filters, the agency can create a composite color image like the ones shown above.

“We often use color as a tool, whether it’s to enhance the details of an object or to visualize what normally could never be seen by the human eye,” NASA said.

There are approximately 3,000 nebulae in our galaxy.

The closest known nebula to our planet is the Helix Nebula, the cosmic remnant of a dying star. It’s about half the distance from Earth as the Orion Nebula – 700 light years (so if you were traveling at the speed of light, it would take you 700 years to get there).

The Hubble Space Telescope has imagined nebulae for 30 years, and these images are helping scientists learn more about how these cosmic clouds evolve, or even darken and shrink, over time.

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