The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows part of the Orion Nebula, 1500 light-years away and the nearest star-forming region to Earth.
Astronomers used 520 Hubble images, taken between 2004 and 2005 in five colours, to make this picture. They also added ground-based photos to fill out the nebula. The ACS mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full Moon.
The faint red stars in this close-up image are the myriad brown dwarves that Hubble spied for the first time in the Orion Nebula in visible light. Sometimes called 'failed stars', brown dwarves are cool objects that are too small to be ordinary stars because they cannot sustain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does.