Orion nebula

The Orion nebula Messier 42 is the brightest diffuse nebula in the sky: it can be seen with the naked eye in the constellation of Orion as a blurred spot in the country sky, and through a pair of binoculars it has the delicate shape of a butterfly wing of the size of about 2 or 3 times that of a full moon.

It is a cloud of gas and dust made bright by the light of its atoms which are excited by the radiation from stars within the nebula.

The nebula is 1500 light-years away from the earth and, for amateurs, is without doubt the most photographed astronomical object.