Rosette Nebula

Photograph courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

An infrared image of the Rosette Nebula shows super-hot O stars (blue dots inside spheres) amid a torrent of gas and dust (green and red). This star-forming nebula, which lies 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros, is named for its rosebud-like shape when seen using only optical light.