A new infrared wide-field image by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope's WIRCam allows astronomers to observe all the stars in the Orion Nebula in a single snapshot.

At distance of merely 1300 light-years from Earth, the Orion Nebula closest star nursery and one of the most prolific found in the Milky Way. Most stars in the Orion Nebula are only a few millions years old, a thousand times younger than the Sun and Earth. Many are still actively forming and are embedded in their natal opaque dust clouds. Contrarily to ordinary visible light, infrared light can penetrate dust and allows astronomers to study star formation.

Most of the red stars in this image suffer high dust extinction and were only first observed with the advent of infrared cameras. Several red fingers of molecular hydrogen gas are seen near the core of the Nebula. They are associated with newly-formed stars escaping from that region at high velocity. 

--Space.com staff

Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope /C. Marmo/Terapix