One of the most well-known constellations in the night sky is the one called "Orion". The delicate structures of dust and gas can be seen in the image released by NASA.
Clouds of dust are affected by the large stars that give off radiation. Two enormous caverns that dominate the cloud were carved out by giant stars that can release up to a million times more light than our sun. Dust grains are broken apart by the radiation. Most of the remaining dust is swept away by the wind when the stars explode.
The data from the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope is used in the image. In order to see the interior structure of objects like nebulae, you need to look in the IR wavelength. The telescope watches the sky for asteroids and produces all-sky maps showing how the sky is changing over time.
The Herschel Space Telescope, which was retired by the European Space Agency, added additional data to the picture. The areas of blue light represent regions of warm dust while the areas of red represent cooler dust. Red areas are very cold and tend to be around the outer edge of the nebula, while the center of the nebula is very hot.
Stars will form in the region as the dust and gas clumps together to form knots, which attract more material until they collapse under gravity to form a new star.
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