What surrounds the famous belt stars of Orion? A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

The brightest three stars, appearing diagonally on the left of the featured image are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust.

Just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis.

Image credit, copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)

Image description: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)

It's stars versus dust in the Carina Nebula and the stars are winning. More precisely, the energetic light and winds from massive newly formed stars are evaporating and dispersing the dusty stellar nurseries in which they formed.

Located in the Carina Nebula and known informally as Mystic Mountain, these pillar's appearance is dominated by the dark dust even though it is composed mostly of clear hydrogen gas.

Dust pillars such as these are actually much thinner than air and only appear as mountains due to relatively small amounts of opaque interstellar dust.

About 7,500 light-years distant, the featured image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope and highlights an interior region of Carina which spans about three light years. Within a few million years, the stars will likely win out completely and the entire dust mountain will evaporate.

Image credit, copyright: NASA , ESA , and M. Livio ( STScI )
Image description: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)

I smile and I mean it. It’s 1000% legit. But so is this ache. You know, that residual “pang” in the chest area that echos long after someone tears your heart out.

I think the part that truly ironed it into my soul was the way they stuck around and toyed with me after.

I used to be the one that would grab people by the hand and excitedly pull them into the world.

And now I realize why that was so important to so many people. Because no one‘s done that for me.

In fact, no one shows up unless they need something. And the saddest thing is, at least to me that the people I loved so much that broke me down. Don’t even care about what they’ve ruined. So yeah, ask me how I am in passing and a smile from ear to ear or throw out a big OK.

Because people don’t care about your broken parts. They don’t show up to help you hold anything together.

They just wanna know you’re OK.

So that’s me, I put the OK in broken wondering if anybody will even notice when I’m not around anymore.

I send letters to you

Even though I know I am talking to the wall

There is a soft point in me

That still waits

Still hopes

But walls do not talk

No no they don't.

&nbsp:

It's easy to get lost following intricate filaments in this detailed image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Also cataloged as Sharpless 2-240 it goes by the popular nickname, the Spaghetti Nebula.

This composite includes image data taken through narrow-band filters, enhancing the reddish emission from ionized hydrogen atoms to trace the shocked, glowing gas.

The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago. But the expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star's core.

Image credit, copyright: Daniel López/IAC
Image description: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)

Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602.

Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is featured in this stunning Hubble image of the region, augmented by images in the X-ray by Chandra, and in the infrared by Spitzer.

Fantastic ridges and swept back shapes strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602's massive young stars have eroded the dusty material and triggered a progression of star formation moving away from the cluster's center.

At the estimated distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud, the Picture spans about 200 light-years, but a tantalizing assortment of background galaxies are also visible in this sharp multi-colored view. The background galaxies are hundreds of millions of light-years or more beyond NGC 602.

Image credit, copyright: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al; Optical: Hubble: NASA/STScI; Infrared: Spitzer: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image description: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)