Orion Nebula
A cloud of glowing gas where new stars are being born, visible to the eye as the fuzzy middle star of Orion’s sword.
Tonight from
Rise, highest point and set are worked out on your device for the place above.
What it is
- Kind of object
- Cloud of glowing gas (nebula)
- Distance
- 1,344 light years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 4.0, visible to the eye from a dark site, easy in binoculars
- Size in the sky
- About 3 times the width of the full Moon
- Constellation
- Orion
- Catalogue
- M 42, NGC 1976
Figures from OpenNGC, CC BY-SA 4.0; the SEDS Messier catalogue, via Wikipedia’s table of Messier objects, CC BY-SA 4.0. All sources
Near it in the sky
- AlnitakA blue supergiant in Orion, about three fingers away.
- AlnilamA blue-white supergiant in Orion, about three fingers away.
- MintakaA blue bright giant in Orion, about three fingers away.
- RigelA blue-white supergiant in Orion, about three fingers away.
- BellatrixA blue-white giant in Orion, about a fist away.