Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. The stars of Orion shine brightly in northern winter skies where the constellation harbors the closest large stellar nursery, the Great Nebula of Orion , a mere 1500 light-years away. The picture does dramatically illustrate that young stars are prodigious sources of X-rays , thought to be produced in hot stellar coronas and surface flares in a young star's strong magnetic field. X-rays when, like the Trapezium stars, it was only a few million years old. The dark lines through the image are instrumental artifacts.
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