Nebula are some of the most beautiful objects there are to see. There are several different ways a nebula can form. When a star starts to die it begins to throw off the outer parts of it's shell, over time these expanding shells of gas move away from the star and form what's called a planetary nebula. Here are a few:

Most of you would be disappointed with what these look like with the eye. These pictures are exposed for hours and hours to get these colors. Most nebula will appear green when viewed through a telescope. One nebula that is always impressive is M42, or the Great Orion Nebula. It can been seen with binoculars. M42 is what's called an emission nebula. It is a great cloud of hydrogen gas. Inside the cloud are stars. The light from these stars causes the gas cloud to glow. M42 (Left) is one of the finest objects in the sky to view. The Hubble Space Telescope took pictures of M42 and they revieled new stars forming, and stars with disk around them (Right). It's from these disk that solar systems would form.

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