The Orion Nebula
The Orion Nebula also known as Messier 42 is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks and brown dwarfs within the nebula, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.
