Orion Nebula (M42) · 1,350 light-years
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Born in a cloud
Stars are born in clouds of gas and dust like the Orion Nebula, 1,350 light-years away. Inside it, gravity is pulling clumps of gas together into hundreds of new stars, and the brightest young ones make the whole cloud glow.
1,350 light-years light left 1,350 years ago, around AD 676
Eagle Nebula (M16) · 7,000 light-years
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The Pillars of Creation
In the Eagle Nebula stand the Pillars of Creation: columns of cold gas several light-years tall. New stars are forming at their tips, while the light of nearby young stars slowly wears the pillars away.
7,000 light-years light left 7,000 years ago, around 4,975 BC
Pleiades (M45) · 444 light-years
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A family of young stars
Stars born together stay together for a while. The Pleiades are about 100 million years old, young for stars, and their hot blue members will drift apart over the next few hundred million years.
444 light-years light left 444 years ago, around AD 1582
Betelgeuse · 550 light-years
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A giant near its end
A star much heavier than the Sun burns fast. Betelgeuse, the red shoulder of Orion, is a supergiant only about 10 million years old that has swollen to hundreds of times the Sun's size. It will explode as a supernova, perhaps within the next 100,000 years.
550 light-years light left 550 years ago, around AD 1476
Ring Nebula (M57) · 2,300 light-years
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A quiet ending
A star like the Sun ends quietly. After swelling into a red giant, it puffs its outer layers into space as a planetary nebula like the Ring Nebula. The hot core left at the centre is a white dwarf, about the size of Earth.
2,300 light-years light left 2,300 years ago, around 275 BC
Crab Nebula (M1) · 6,500 light-years
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A star explodes
A heavy star ends in a supernova. Astronomers in China recorded this one in the year 1054, bright enough to see in daylight for weeks. The Crab Nebula is its wreckage, still expanding at about 1,500 km every second.
6,500 light-years light left 6,500 years ago, around 4,475 BC
Crab Pulsar (PSR B0531+21) · 6,500 light-years
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What the explosion left
At the Crab's heart is the collapsed core: a neutron star as heavy as the Sun but only about 20 km across, spinning 30 times a second. Its beams sweep past Earth with every turn, so we see it as a pulsar.
6,500 light-years light left 6,500 years ago, around 4,475 BC
SN 1987A · 168,000 light-years
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Our neighbour's supernova
SN 1987A, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, was the nearest supernova seen in almost 400 years. Hours before its light arrived, detectors in Japan, the USA and Russia caught about two dozen neutrinos from the collapsing core.
168,000 light-years light left 168,000 years ago
Cygnus X-1 · 7,200 light-years
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Collapse to a black hole
The heaviest stars can collapse all the way to a black hole. Cygnus X-1, about 7,000 light-years away, was the first black hole ever identified: about 21 times the Sun's mass, pulling gas off a giant blue companion star.
7,200 light-years light left 7,200 years ago, around 5,175 BC
Sky photographs: CDS hips2fits (DSS2, Mellinger and other surveys) or a backup survey · All guided tours