Orion nebula facts for kids

The Orion nebula

The constellation of Orion with the Orion Nebula (lower middle)

The Orion nebula, or Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976, is a diffuse nebula. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years. It is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.

It is south of the Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion.

Big as it is, the Orion nebula is just part of an even larger star-forming area known as the Orion complex.

Stellar nursery

View of several "proplyds" in the Orion Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

The nebula is a huge stellar nursery. 700 stars are in the process of forming there. At its heart is a very young open cluster, known as the Trapezium because of the pattern formed by its main stars.

Recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have shown protoplanetary disks inside the Orion Nebula. This is a major discovery. They are called proplyds for short. There are more than 150 of these in the nebula. They are thought to be to be systems in the earliest stages of planetary system formation. The sheer numbers have been used as evidence that the formation of star systems is fairly common in the universe.

Stars form when clumps of hydrogen and other gases in an H II region contract under their own gravity. As the gas collapses, the central clump grows stronger and the gas heats to extreme temperatures by converting gravitational potential energy to thermal energy. If the temperature gets high enough, nuclear fusion will start, and form a protostar. The protostar is 'born' when it begins to emit enough energy to balance out its gravity and halt gravitational collapse.

Images for kids

Amateur image of the Orion Nebula taken with a DSLR camera.
Messier's drawing of the Orion Nebula in his 1771 memoir, Mémoires de l'Académie Royale
Henry Draper's 1880 photograph of the Orion Nebula, the first ever taken.
One of Andrew Ainslie Common's 1883 photograph of the Orion Nebula, the first to show that a long exposure could record new stars and nebulae invisible to the human eye.
Optical images reveal clouds of gas and dust in the Orion Nebula; an infrared image (right) reveals the new stars shining within.
Orion A molecular cloud from VISTA reveals many young stars and other objects.
Star Formation Fireworks in Orion
View of the ripples (Kelvin–Helmholtz instability) formed by the action of stellar winds on the cloud.
Panoramic image of the center of the nebula, taken by the Hubble Telescope. This view is about 2.5 light years across. The Trapezium is at center left.
Orion over ALMA.
An APEX view of star formation in the Orion Nebula.
Orion Nebula was captured using the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope.
Orion Nebula Complex including M42, M43, Running Man Nebula (NGC 1973, 1975, and 1977) and much of the surrounding nebulosity.
Panoramic image of the Orion Nebula, taken by Ioannidis Panos with an 8 Inch Newtonian telescope and a Nikon D70 camera.
Infant stars, image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
The Orion Nebula imaged with the 2.2m ESO/MPG telescope.
The central part of the Orion Nebula.
This wide-field view of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), was taken with the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Orion by Spitzer.
The Orion Nebula's biggest stars.
An infrared image showing fledgling stars located in the Orion Nebula.
Core detail of the nebula with all the stars identified.
A shot of the core details of the Orion Nebula.
H-alpha image of the nebula with amateur telescope.
X-rays produced by the young Orion stars penetrate the gas and dust clouds, producing this image as seen by the Chandra X-ray Observatory
Orion Nebula, photographed with amateur equipment