Orion Nebula

Orion Nebula or M42 or NGC 1976

Last updated: June 01, 2013

The Orion Nebula through a telescope shows one of the finest performances of the sky.
At the heart of the nebula, four blue stars forming a trapezium, long-distance illuminate the material dispersed in space.
The atoms absorb the starlight and re-emit according to their own color, oxygen emits in the green, hydrogen and nitrogen in the red.
The radio astronomical observations reveal that the Orion Nebula is a small part of the large opaque cloud of Orion.
Contraction of the cloud were born the Trapezium stars, and a group of proto-stellar nebulae, located behind the Orion Nebula.
The Orion nebula was discovered in 1610 by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, who was apparently the first to notice his nebulous.

Although Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe and Johann Bayer identified the stars in the center of the nebula, as one big star, Galileo had detected a small number of stars observed when this region with its famous telescope.

Image: The Orion Nebula, also known as the M42 and NGC 1976, is an emission nebula - reflection, green, in the heart of the constellation Orion.

Nebula M42, M43 and NGC 1977

In the famous Orion Nebula M42, there is also the nebula NGC 1977 in blue on the image next to M42 which is shown in red, the color of hydrogen.
In NGC 1977, there are also two small nebulae NGC 1973 and NGC 1975, barely visible in the picture.
The blue stars to the left of the image are in the nebula NGC 1981.
The small nebula M43 red at the bottom left of M42, M42 adhered to.
The big blue dot very bright below the Great Red Spot to the right of the image is the nebula NGC 1980.
These nebulae represent only a small part of the wealth of interstellar objects in the large region of Orion.
The Orion Nebula is located at a distance of 1 350 light years from Earth.

The width of this heavenly sight is about 45 light years away.