M42 is the brightest diffuse nebula in the sky, it is also very bright and can be seen with the naked eye under good conditions. It is a turbulent cloud of gas and dust, the most conspicuous part of a larger region that is spread over more than half of the whole constellation of Orion.
It is located at about 1500 light years and contains many protoplanetary disks discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope.
This image was taken in Red, Visual, Blue and Hydrogen-Alpha filters using Faulkes Telescope North.
