Type of Object:  The Orion Nebula is a giant cloud of gas and dust, very active in star formation.  Four central stars to the nebula, called the Trapezium, are responsible for ionizing the gas surrounding them and causing the glowing nebula. Behind the visible nebulosity is a large molecular cloud.

Distance: 1500 light years (= 1.4 x 10¹⁶ km = 8.87 x 10¹⁵ miles or 8870 tera miles)
Size: 15 light years across (= 1.4 x 10¹⁴ km = 8.87 x 10¹³ miles or about 9 tera miles)
Coordinates (Epoch J2000):
         Right Ascension:  5h 35m 17.4s
         Declination:          -5^o 23’ 27.99”

Other Names: M42, The Great Nebula in Orion, NGC 1976

Radio Brightness at 1420 MHz (21 cm): 410 Jy

Some Links
http://www.seds.org/billa/twn/n1976x.html
http://vis.sdsc.edu/research/orion.html
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/cycle1/0054/

Images shown below, at different wavelengths, cover a
0.5 degree x 0.5 degree area of the sky centered on the nebula.  The images are taken from  the SKYVIEW Virtual Observatory maintained under NASA ADP Grant NAS5-32068 with P.I. Thomas A. McGlynn under the auspices of the High Energy Astrophysics Science  Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at the GSFC Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics. SKYVIEW contains catalogs and surveys from x-ray to radio observations. The site is located at http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/