It’s a great time of year to view the amazing Orion Nebula

The seasons have changes and you can really feel it in the air at night, as the temperatures are making it feel like fall!

With the clear skies that accompany this time of year, get set to see one of the most spectacular objects in all the night sky.

The great Orion Nebula is now coming into view, if you look to the East around 11 p.m. local time.

Buried deep inside the constellation of Orion the Hunter, the Orion Nebula, also known as the great Messier M42 nebula, is a collection of new stars and vast regions of dust some 1,340 light years from your eye.

The nebula was seen by the Mayans and the first recorded view of it via crude telescope were credited to observers in November of 1610.

To find the Orion Nebula, you need to look at the three main belt stars in Orion, then look at the lowest of the three, the star Alnitak.

After finding Alnitak, look to the lower right of the star and you should see a region of three fainter stars.

This is the area where the Orion Nebula is located. Try to view this region in a pair or binoculars. The fuzzy star area is indeed, the Orion Nebula.

The region of stars to the right of Alnitak, is also known as the “sword” of Orion. The nebula is the object in the middle of the three faint stars.

Beyond the beauty of the Orion Nebula in a pair of binoculars, a telescope will bring out the amazing beauty of this incredible object.

In a telescope, the first thing that you may notice is a small group of four blue stars compacted into a tiny trapezoid shaped cluster.

This is the famous Trapezium star cluster that Galileo first observed Feb. 4, 1617 in his crude telescope.

The Trapezium cluster is the primary light source of the Orion Nebula.

The four primary stars are within 1.5 light years of each other and each are about 30 times the mass of the sun.

The wispy nebula was not noticed by Galileo, but this makes for a grand view in a decent-size telescope.

The true size of the Orion Nebula is around 20 light years in diameter and this is the home of new star formation.

Many new stars are “birthed” in this nebula and there are also a large number of brown dwarf stars here too.

Finally, the Orion Nebula is part of a much larger complex of stars and gas, known as the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

This is a vast region of material that fills a large portion of the visible constellation of Orion as you see it in the night sky.

In the telescope under low power, the Orion Nebula on a dark and moon less night, looks like a magical fan shaped object, with so many stars and gas clouds, simply amazing.

Don’t miss this great celestial treat.

Find additional facts about about the Orion Nebula here.

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