Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage TeamExplanation: This esthetic close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features
LL Orionis, interacting with the
Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion’s
stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable star
LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than
the wind from our own middle-aged Sun. As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is formed, analogous to the
bow wave of a boat moving through water or a plane traveling at
supersonic speed. The small, arcing, graceful structure just above and left of center is LL Ori’s cosmic bow shock, measuring about half a light-year across. The slower gas is flowing away from the
Orion Nebula‘s hot central star cluster, the
Trapezium, located off the upper left corner of the picture. In three
dimensions, LL Ori’s wrap-around shock front is shaped like a bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the “bottom” edge. The beautiful picture is part of a
large mosaic view of
the complex stellar nursery in Orion, filled with a myriad of
fluid shapes associated with
star formation.