Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  41 the01 Ori  ·  42 c Ori  ·  43 the02 Ori  ·  44 iot Ori  ·  45 Ori  ·  De Mairan's nebula  ·  Great Orion Nebula  ·  Hatysa  ·  IC 420  ·  LBN 963  ·  LBN 974  ·  LBN 977  ·  LBN 979  ·  LDN 1640  ·  Lower Sword  ·  M 42  ·  M 43  ·  Mairan's Nebula  ·  NGC 1973  ·  NGC 1975  ·  NGC 1976  ·  NGC 1977  ·  NGC 1980  ·  NGC 1981  ·  NGC 1982  ·  NGC 1999  ·  Orion Nebula  ·  Sh2-279  ·  Sh2-281  ·  The star 42Ori  ·  And 7 more.
The Great Orion & Running Man Nebulas, schmaks
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The Great Orion & Running Man Nebulas

The Great Orion & Running Man Nebulas, schmaks
Powered byPixInsight

The Great Orion & Running Man Nebulas

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Description

For astronomers, Orion is surely one of the most important constellations, as it contains one of the nearest and most active stellar nurseries in our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Here tens of thousands of new stars have formed within the past ten million years or so—a very short span of time in astronomical terms. For comparison: our own Sun is now 4,600 million years old and has not yet reached half-age. Reduced to a human time-scale, star formation in Orion would have been going on for just one month as compared to the Sun's 40 years.

In fact, located at a distance of 1,600 ly, the Orion Nebula plays such an important role in astrophysics that it can be argued that our understanding of star formation is largely based on the Orion Nebula.

Visible with the naked eye even from areas affected by some light pollution, it is seen as the middle "star" in the sword of Orion, which are the three stars located south of Orion's Belt. The star appears fuzzy to sharp-eyed observers, and the nebulosity is obvious through binoculars or a small telescope.

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