M42 and Running Man Nebula

The Great Orion Nebula

Easily visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch in the middle of Orion’s sword. What we call the Orion Nebula is just the central part of a larger cloud that stretches across several hundred light years. Four bright stars in a parallogram near the nebula’s centre form the Trapezium. These hot young stars heat up the surrounding gas clouds, causing the nebula to emit light. The Orion Nebula is full of hot, bright blue stars and is an area of active star formation. The Hubble Space Telescope has found protoplanetary disks of gas and dust around some of these stars. These disks are about twice the size of our solar system, and may eventually condense to form extrasolar planets. M42 is a veritable catalog of different object types, including multiple stars and reflection plus emission nebulosity. Try to view the Great Orion Nebula on every possible occasion with any type of optical instrument as well as with the naked eye. The wealth of detail visible in this nebula is simply outstanding. Intricate wisps, shapes and the contrast between brighter and darker regions never ceases to amaze.

The Running Man Nebula

NGC 1977 (The Running Man) forms a nebulous complex with NGC 1973 and NGC 1975 just 1/2 degree to the north of the famous Orion Nebula (M42). This complex is a mixture of emission nebulae (which appear red in photographs) and reflection nebulae (which appear blue). NGC 1977 is the largest of the three but is the most difficult to