This object is located in the faint constellation of Cancer the crab. Astronomers believe that at least one half of all stars are part of multiple star systems composed of two or more suns.
Iota is such a star system.
While the combined light of its two stars is over 50 times that of our sun, its great distance of 170 light years makes it a faint 4th magnitude star in the northern part of Cancer. The brighter star is a yellow giant, somewhat more yellow than our sun and its companion is a hot blue star. This color contrast is easily seen in any small telescope. The area of the sky in which the constellation of Orion is located is occupied by a tremendous cloud of hydrogen gas hundreds of light years across and about 1,300 light years away. M-42 is a portion of this cloud which contains several super hot stars which recently formed out of the cloud.