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A few things of note: this nebula is about 1500 light years away from us, and it's not alone. It's part of the giant Orion Molecular Cloud Complex which basically takes up the entire constellation of Orion in the night sky. It's a region of space that forms new stars. Parts of it with hot, bright stars are lit up and were recognized as "nebulae" already hundreds of years ago. The darker parts of the cloud could not then be seen.

Image credit: Helge Buesing

The Fireworks Galaxy. Imaged at Bridgewater State University Observatory, Fall 2019. Reprocessed 2025. Credit: BSU Experimental Astrophysics Research (BEAR) Team.

NGC 6188 Nebula is also known as the Firebird Nebula. It is an emission nebula located near the edge of a vast, dark molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, approximately 4,000 light-years from Earth.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of the iconic Pillars of Creation, a region where new stars are being born within thick clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars resemble towering rock formations, yet they are much more porous. Composed of cool interstellar gas and dust, they sometimes appear semi-transparent in near-infrared light.

Image by: Carlos Taylor

Also referred to as Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest major neighbor to the Milky Way. It is roughly twice the size of our galaxy and lies approximately 2.5 million light-years away.

The Bubble Nebula is about 9,000 light-years away from us in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia. Stars produce stellar wind as particles stream from their surfaces, and extremely hot, high-mass stars produce a lot of it - enough to blow bubbles in space, like the one we see here. The area is embedded in a molecular cloud which glows red due to hydrogen gas, excited by the high-energy light emitted by the hot star within the nebula.