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Anomaly cluster 111 EP

Great Orion Nebula

RA 83.8187° · Dec -5.3897° · openngc

Real photograph of Great Orion Nebula 📷 Real photo
NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble
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Score breakdown

· 9 badges
111 pts · Anomaly
Anomaly 120 pts → Mythic
  • The Orion Nebula +34
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye +14
  • Messier object +12
  • Cluster still wrapped in its gas +12
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon +12
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Star cluster +7
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • In Orion's hunting ground +6
Total score 111

9 more points to reach Mythic.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Messier object · +12
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Cluster still wrapped in its gas · +12
  • In Orion's hunting ground · +6
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon · +12
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye · +14
  • The Orion Nebula · +34

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M42.

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A star cluster still wrapped in the nebula that made it — newborn stars lighting up their own birth cloud.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 4 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Orion.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around December — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. The stars are blue-white and brand new; the gas around them glows red, ionised by their ultraviolet glare.

What's in a name

  • Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.

How we came to know it

  • Messier's anti-list. Charles Messier was a comet hunter, and he compiled his famous catalogue in the 1770s and 80s purely as a list of fuzzy things that are NOT comets. History remembers the distractions and forgets the comets.

Properties

aliases
Orion Nebula
constellation
Ori
dso type
Cl+N
mag
4
messier
yes
messier number
042
name
Great Orion Nebula
named
yes
radial velocity kms
28
redshift
0.0001
size arcmin
90

Nearby objects

About Great Orion Nebula

Great Orion Nebula is an anomaly cluster. It sits in the constellation Ori and shines at apparent magnitude 4.

A star cluster still wrapped in the nebula that made it — newborn stars lighting up their own birth cloud.

How to see it

Look for Great Orion Nebula in the constellation Ori. At apparent magnitude 4, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Great Orion Nebula is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why Great Orion Nebula is an anomaly cluster

Great Orion Nebula scores 111 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the anomaly tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 9 science badges — Star cluster, Messier object, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Cluster still wrapped in its gas, In Orion's hunting ground, Bigger on the sky than the full Moon and Bright enough for the unaided eye — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.