At magnitude 5.9, sharp-eyed observers under a dark sky can spot this cluster with their naked eyes. Through a small telescope at 100x, you’ll spot 50 stars in an area 12′ across.

A star is currently forming in the Orion Nebula, visible to the naked eye right under Orion’s Belt. This giant cloud of gas ...

The Orion Nebula, home to 178 proplyds including 177-341 W. (Image credit: ESO/G. Beccari) ...

The nebula sits on Orion’s “sword,” which hangs below the lowest (leftmost as the constellation is rising) star on his belt, 2nd-magnitude Alnitak.

The Orion Nebula Cluster, located about 1,350 light-years away and only 2.5 million years old, contains roughly 4,000 stars packed into a compact, gas-rich region.

The Orion nebula as seen by the JWST (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) Not stars nor planets ...

Alnilam, the middle star in Orion’s belt, shines at a magnitude of +1.72 — just about equal to that of Alnitak. But, get this: Alnilam is 2,000 light years away!

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 10, 2023, Section D, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Unexpected Orbiting Objects: In the Orion Nebula, Impossibilities Abound.

This night, Orion and the M42 nebula were caught in the branches of a close-by tree. With the cold, waiting for it to rise higher was not an option.

The dragon's fat shape holds clues about how stars form -- and how the process stops. Orion's Nebula is an enormous cloud of gas and dust about 1,300 light-years from Earth.