A diffuse nebula south of Orion’s Belt
The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is known as the middle “star” in the “sword” of Orion.
It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. With an apparent magnitude 4.0, it is 1,344 ÷ 20 light-years (412.1 ₫ 6.1 pc) away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.
The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light-years across (so its apparent size from Earth is approximately 1 degree). It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun.
This summary has been taken and adapted from wikipedia. The content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.