page_title: Messier 43
hierarchical_section_title: Messier 43
caption_attribution_description: English: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a close-up view of an outer part of the Orion Nebula’s little brother, Messier 43. This nebula, which is sometimes referred to as De Mairan’s Nebula after its discoverer, is separated from the famous Orion Nebula (Messier 42) by only a dark lane of dust. Both nebulae are part of the massive stellar nursery called the Orion molecular cloud complex, which includes several other nebulae, such as the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) and the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024). The Orion molecular cloud complex is about 1400 light-years away, making it one of the closest massive star formation regions to Earth. Hubble has therefore studied this extraordinary region extensively over the past two decades, monitoring how stellar winds sculpt the clouds of gas, studying young stars and their surroundings and discovering many elusive objects, such as brown dwarf stars. This view shows several of the brilliant hot young stars in this less-studied region and it also reveals many of the curious features around even younger stars that are still cocooned by dust. This picture was created from images taken using the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Images through yellow (F555W, coloured blue) and near-infrared (F814W, coloured red) filters were combined. The exposure times were 1000 s per filter and the field of view is about 3.3 arcminutes across.
context_page_description: Messier 43 or M43, also known as De Mairan's Nebula and NGC 1982, is a star-forming nebula with a prominent H II region in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It was discovered by the French scientist Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan some time before 1731, then catalogued by French astronomer Charles Messier on March 4, 1769. The De Mairan's Nebula is part of the Orion Nebula, being separated from the main nebula by a dense lane of dust known as the northeast dark lane. It is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.
  The main ionizing star in this nebula is HD 37061, which is positioned near the center of the H II region and located 1,300 ± 160 ly from the Sun. This is a triple star system with the brighter component being a single-lined spectroscopic binary. The main component is a blue-white hued B-type main-sequence star with a stellar classification of B0.5V or B1V. It has 19±7 times the mass of the Sun and 5.7±0.8 times the Sun's radius. The star is radiating over 26,000 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 31,000 K. It is spinning rapidly with a projected rotational velocity of around 200 km/s.
context_section_description: Messier 43 or M43, also known as De Mairan's Nebula and NGC 1982, is a star-forming nebula with a prominent H II region in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It was discovered by the French scientist Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan some time before 1731, then catalogued by French astronomer Charles Messier on March 4, 1769. The De Mairan's Nebula is part of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), being separated from the main nebula by a dense lane of dust known as the northeast dark lane. It is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.
  The main ionizing star in this nebula is HD 37061 (variable star designation NU Ori), which is positioned near the center of the H II region and located 1,300 ± 160 ly (400 ± 50 pc) from the Sun. This is a triple star system with the brighter component being a single-lined spectroscopic binary. The main component is a blue-white hued B-type main-sequence star with a stellar classification of B0.5V or B1V. It has 19±7 times the mass of the Sun and 5.7±0.8 times the Sun's radius. The star is radiating over 26,000 times the Sun's luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 31,000 K. It is spinning rapidly with a projected rotational velocity of around 200 km/s.
  The H II region is a roundish volume of ionized hydrogen centered on HD 37061. It has a diameter of about 4.5′, corresponding to a linear size of 2.1 ly (0.65 pc). The net hydrogen alpha luminosity of this region is (3.0±1.1)×10³⁵ erg s⁻¹; equivalent to 78 L☉. There is a dark lane crossing in front of the region from north to south, known as the M43 dark lane.
caption: Infrared view of (part of) De Mairan's Nebula (M43) taken by the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys
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