Messier 42 (M42), the famous Orion Nebula, is an emission-reflection nebula located in the constellation Orion, the Hunter.
With an apparent magnitude of 4.0, the Orion Nebula is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky and is visible to the naked eye. It lies at a distance of 1,344 light years from Earth and is the nearest stellar nursery to Earth. The nebula has the designation NGC 1976 in the New General Catalogue.
Messier 42 occupies an area of 65 by 60 arc minutes of apparent sky and its spatial diameter measures 24 light years. The nebula has a mass 2,000 times that of the Sun and contains associations of stars, reflection nebulae, neutral clouds of dust and gas, and ionized gas. It is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a larger region of nebulosity that also includes the famous Horsehead Nebula, the Flame Nebula, the emission nebula Barnard’s Loop, De Mairan’s Nebula (M43), and the reflection nebula Messier 78.
The Orion Molecular Cloud Complex covers an area of more than 10 degrees, which is more than half of Orion constellation.
--Messier-Objects.com
More:
Messier42 - WikipediaMessier42 - Astropixels.comMessier42 - SEDSThis is image #30 and #31 in long term project to photograph the complete Messier catalog. Really happy with this one, it is a reprocessing of
Messier42 - Astrobin, with new G sub, used DSS and Fitswork to remove majority of satellite trails then hand removed the remnants, so learned a lot. Ha, R,G,B each 300 seconds.
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