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Exploring the Interstellar Medium

A blue cloud fills the left side of the image. The blue cloud transitions to white and then reddish yellow toward its edge. A plume of yellow gas extends from the cloud in the lower-right quadrant of the image. one prominent knot in the cloud, near the plume, is a proplyd.
This Hubble Space Telescope picture shows a hypersonic shock wave (lower right) of material moving at 148,000 miles per hour in the Orion Nebula, a star-forming region 1,500 light-years away. Studies of similar objects infer that such highly supersonic shock waves are formed by a beam of material coming out of newly formed stars. The plume is only 1,500 years old. The image is 112 light-year across. This color photograph is a composite of separate images taken at the wavelengths of the two abundant elements in the nebula: Hydrogen and Oxygen.
NASA, C.R. O'Dell (Rice University)
Levels
  • Advanced (9-12+)
Material Type
  • Lesson Plan
Heliophysics Big Ideas
  • Big Idea 2.2 – The Sun defines the space…
NGSS
  • ESS1 - Earth's Place in the Universe
Heliophysics Topics
  • Interstellar Space
Heliophysics Missions
  • IBEX
  • Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS)
Material Cost per Learner Free
Language English

These activities introduce the interstellar medium (ISM) using real astronomical observations from space missions and ground-based telescopes. Students will learn about the nature of the ISM, how it interacts with stars and how it can be detected.

Download a PDF of this Teacher Guide: https://cesar.esa.int/upload/201807/exploring_the_ism_teacher_guide.pdf