What you see here is the nebula M78, the nebula to the right, and NGC 2071, the one to the left, in the constellation Orion. As you can see, there seems to be a very dark and dusty cloud that is blocking out all the light, but believe it or not, there are actually stars there. Although the cloud is absorbing the light preventing us from seeing the stars, it also reflects the light of many bright blue stars that have recently formed in the nebula.
M78 is around 5 light-years across and is in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that holds the Great Nebula in Orion as well as the famous Horsehead Nebula; For those of you who don't know what that is, it is basically a nebula that is somewhat shaped like a horse head. Surprising right?
Well here is something even more mind-boggling... This picture is of the nebula 1600 years ago... No we did not go back in time...No we did not have such technology back in the day to go into space and take such pictures...Well, then how is this possible?
The reason why this picture is around 1600 years old is because that is how long it takes for the light to travel all the way to us. Although light is traveling at 300,000 km/sec, which is the fastest any object can go, stars are so far away from us that what we see on Earth is what happened to the star thousands of years ago. With the help of satellites like the Voyager 1 and other satellites that travel through space, we are able to get better and more recent pictures of how stars and planets and nebulae look today.
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