The Hubble Space Telescope catches a field of failed stars embedded in the Orion Nebula.

In this image, Hubble’s lens picks out a myriad of faint red stars – the space telescope’s first brown dwarf catch in Orion – in the visible range of the light spectrum. A veil of dust and gas washes over the region.

Brown dwarfs are cool objects too small to sustain the nuclear fusion that powers the cores of normal stars like our Sun.

This Hubble view is part of a larger mosaic of 520 images collected between 2004 and 2005, and in five colors. The mosaic pieces together a comprehensive look at the Orion Nebula as seen by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

• The Splendor of Orion: A Star Factory Unveiled

-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team