'Survivor' Planets: Astronomers Witness First Steps of Planet Growth - and Destruction

Artist's Concept Running Time: 45 seconds

This animation reveals the topography and beauty of the Orion Nebula like never before. Based on data obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope, all of the gas clouds, stars and proplyds are positioned as accurately as possible. The animation ends with a close-up examination of the proplyd HST-10, where astronomers see dust grains clumping in the early formation of rocky planets, but whose gaseous envelope is also being burned away by the Trapezium stars in the nebula's center.

Credit: Greg Bacon (STScI), model based on data by C.R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University), and The American Museum of Natural History/Rose Center for Earth and Space