Our solar system including the Sun, Earth and Moon was formed around 4.5 billion years ago. This stellar nursery was formed from a large cloud of dust and gas. If you want to see a stellar nursery today all you have to do is to find Orion.
Just below the stars of Orion’s Belt you will notice the fuzzy patch of the Great Orion Nebula. This is a stellar nursery: an area of space where as many as 700 stars are actually being created out of a giant cloud of dust and gas at the moment.
On a clear evening during the winter months it can be seen with the naked eye. The Orion Nebula is around 1,300 light years away. This means that light travelling at 186,000 miles per second has taken 1,300 years to reach us.
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