AKA: Orion Nebula, NGC 1976
Class: Diffuse Nebula
Distance: 1.27e+16 km (1344 ly)
One of the brightest nebulae.
The closest region of massive star formation to Earth.
24 light-years across.
Contains a very young open cluster called the Trapezium.
Contains approx 700 stars in various stages of formation.
Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks, brown dwarfs, turbulent motions gas, and photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.
Part of a much larger nebula called the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.