The Orion Nebula – M42

The great Orion Nebula is just south of the Orion Belt  and is even just barely visible with the naked eye.  At around 1340 light years away, this is the closest star formation to earth.  It’s a stellar nursery kicking out new stars and is one of the most observed and studied nebula in the night sky.  The core is an emissions nebula and the hydrogen gets all excited and ramped up by the hot stars buried within the core.  The beauty is the hydrogen can’t retain the energy for long and release all those pretty photons for us to see.