This week's stunning Hubble image shows stars glistening in the Orion Nebula

After more than 30 years of operation, the Hubble Space Telescope continues to produce spectacular and scientifically significant images, making it one of the great triumphs in contemporary astronomy. Every week, Hubble scientists publish an image taken by the telescope. This week's image includes two brilliant stars as well as a portion of a well-known nebula. The picture depicts a portion of the stunning Orion Nebula, with the bright star V 372 Orionis and a companion star on its upper-left and lower-right sides, respectively. Known for being a stellar nursery where many new stars are created, the Orion Nebula is 1,450 light-years away. Photo Credit: SciTechDaily Variable stars, like the star V 372 Orionis, are stars whose brightness varies over time. Because they brighten in a specific way and can be used to precisely measure distances to extremely far-off galaxies, certain variable stars, known as Cepheid variables, are particularly significant to astronomy. Orion variables, such as V 372, are a distinct class of variable. Variables in Orion brighten and fade in an erratic way, occasionally exploding to become noticeably brighter than usual for a brief period of time. They are frequently discovered in nebulae, such as the Orion Nebula, which contain a large number of newborn stars. These youthful, eruptive stars are anticipated to settle into a less volatile state.     Photo Credit: Wikipedia The Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope were used to capture the image of the stars within the nebula. Hubble can see at some wavelengths of the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums in addition to visible light wavelengths, which are equivalent to what the human eye would perceive. The telescope was able to capture both the stars and the swirls of dust and gas in which they resided by combining data from visible light and infrared investigations in this particular image.