The Orion Nebula: Where Stars Are Born

By C. Robert O'Dell

The glowing cloud in Orion's sword, the Orion Nebula is a thing of beauty in the night sky; it is also the closest center of massive star formation--a stellar nursery that reproduces the conditions in which our own Sun formed some 4.5 billion years ago. The study of the Orion Nebula, focused upon by ever more powerful telescopes from Galileo's time to our own, clarifies how stars are formed, and how we have come to understand the process. C. Robert O'Dell has spent a lifetime studying Orion, and in this book he explains what the Nebula is, how it shines, its role in giving birth to stars, and the insights it affords into how common (or rare) planet formation might be.

An account of astronomy's extended engagement with one remarkable celestial object, this book also tells the story of astronomy over the last four centuries. To help readers appreciate the Nebula and its secrets, O'Dell unfolds his tale chronologically, as astrophysical knowledge developed, and our knowledge of the Nebula and the night sky improved.

Because he served as chief scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, O'Dell conveys a sense of continuity with his professional ancestors as he describes the construction of the world's most powerful observatory. The result is a rare insider's view of this observatory--and, from that unique perspective, an intimate observer's understanding of one of the sky's most instructive and magnificent objects.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067401183X
• ISBN13: 9780674011830
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The beauty of Star birth

This relatively short book covers a lot of material on astronomy and in a very understandable and thoroughly entertaining way. Mr. O'Dell, a noted scientist who played a big role in the development of the Hubble space telescope, does a beautiful job of blending the facts and history of astronomy into this fascinating tale of the Orion Nebula. He covers some interesting history of astronomical observations and of the telescope, astrophotography and other detectors. He then goes into many details of the birth and evolution of stars from their initial gravitational collapse inside a molecular cloud to their achieving the nuclear fusion state and reaching hydrostatic equilibrium and then their long life on the main sequence. He also discuses some interesting objects such as brown dwarfs and rouge planets (star wantabes that didn't have the initial mass to ignite fusion). He has a very interesting coverage of the Hubble space telescope's history including the details of the infamous mirror problem and how it happened. As he gets into the description of the Orion Nebula itself, he covers (and documents with beautiful pictures) many of the amazing features of this relatively nearby young stellar nursery. He discusses the dominant stars such as Theta1C, the numerous proplyds, the visible shock waves and the high speed particle jets emanating from the circumstellar disks. A particularly thought provoking passage in this book was when Mr. O'Dell described what it would look like to an observer who was within the Orion Nebula Cluster - he painted a spectacular picture inside my mind! In the latter chapters, he covers topics like planet formation, the possibility of life in the universe, and how scientist are more accurately refining some of the terms of famous Drake equation. He concludes with a short description of the scientific process and how we have gained more and more understanding of our universe from the works of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein. As each added to our knowledge, sometimes we had to let go of older ideas. As Spencer Tracy said in the movie, Inherit the Wind, "Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. You can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. You may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline." As science reveals more answers to the origin of the universe, we sometimes have to abandon the simpler (and perhaps more confronting) explanations. This is a book that will make you think, open your mind to the beauty of the cosmos, and appreciate the work of those giants on whose shoulders we stand as we gaze to the future and unravel the past of this amazing universe we inhabit.