Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Strampelli (STScI)
This image shows the central portion of the Orion Nebula, where the Hubble Space Telescope was used to conduct a survey for low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and planets. Each symbol identifies a pair of objects, which can be seen as a single dot of light in the symbol’s center. The thicker inner circle represents the primary body, and the thinner outer circle indicates the companion. The circles are color-coded: Red for a planet; orange for a brown dwarf; and yellow for a star. Adjacent to each symbol is a pair of Hubble images. The picture on the left is the original image of the primary and companion. The image on the left shows the companion only, with the primary object digitally subtracted through a special image processing technique that separates the images of the objects into binary pairs. The portion of the Orion Nebula measures roughly 4 by 3 light-years.