- Messier 43 (Wikipedia)
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 d’Ortous de Mairan some time before 1731, then catalogued by Charles Messier in 1769. It is physically part of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), separate from that 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.