Located in the constellation of Orion the Hunter at a distance of approximately 1,500 light years¹, is The Great Nebula in Orionn¹.  Designated M42, it is the brightest diffuse nebula in our sky¹.  Due to its prominence, the Orion Nebula is probably the most studied³, and imaged, HII region by both amateur and professional astronomers.  M42 is located around the second star in the "Sword of Orion" and is visible during the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere.  Under moderately dark skies, it is visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy star.  It is a rewarding and impressive sight in telescopes of every size, from the smallest glasses to the greatest Earth and Space telescopes.  The stars in the nebula are very young and observations from the Hubble Space Telescope² have detected new stars currently being formed from the gasses and dust of the nebula.  Some of the recently formed young stars can be seen as bright spots in the clouds of gas.  These stars are still partially obscured by the nebula gas.  The bright central portion of the nebula is known as the Trapezium.  Its name comes from the central cluster of four bright young stars arranged in a trapezoidal asterism².  Under good seeing, and using a small amateur telescope, up to six stars can be detected in the Trapezium cluster.  The small, circular, nebula located just above the "body" of M42 is designated M43 and is included as a separate object in Messier's catalog.

The image is orientated with north at the top and east to the left.  Image integration and processing were accomplished using the software applications PixInsight^TM and Photoshop^TM.  The image was assembled by mapping SII filtered data to red, Ha filtered data to green, and OIII filtered data to blue.  This method of image assembly is known as the Hubble Palette.  The stars were overlaid with data from a red, green, and blue filtered image.  A "near true color" version of the image may be viewed here.