Nebula · Orion

Grande Nébuleuse d'Orion

The closest massive star forming region to Earth, 1,500 light-years away, just below Orion's belt.

In the catalogue, the thumbnail for this object is cropped in on its subject, so that it can be seen at card size. This view here is the whole photograph, as I produced it.

It is one of the few nebulae visible to the naked eye. At its heart, four young massive stars form the Trapezium, whose ultraviolet radiation sculpts the whole cloud. It is so bright that the problem turns around. Its centre saturates in a few seconds, while its outer extensions take hours. It is one of the rare objects where too much exposure does as much harm as not enough.

Source: NASA, catalogue Messier de Hubble, Messier 42. A figure wrong? Report it.

11m 1 shot

0 towards 22h 12m · cumulative integration on this object

Temps d'intégration : the total exposure time, the sum of every exposure stacked on an object.