The Great Nebula in Orion

The nearest nursery of great stars, studied in 1875 and 1876.

Chart: The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings
Plate: Plate XV
Astronomer: Étienne Léopold Trouvelot
Date: 1881
Held by: New York Public Library · via Wikimedia Commons

Plate XVfrom a study made 1875 to 1876

Format

The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Plate XV of The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1881, the last of the fifteen, from a study Étienne Léopold Trouvelot made in 1875 and 1876. The Orion Nebula, Messier 42, lies just south of Orion's Belt as the middle star of the hunter's sword, one of the brightest nebulae in the sky and visible to the naked eye. It is about 1,267 light-years away and some 25 light-years across, the closest region of massive star formation to Earth, holding about 2,000 times the mass of the Sun. Older books called it the Great Nebula in Orion, as this plate does. Stars are being born in what Trouvelot drew.

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About this reproduction

A faithful reproduction of a public-domain chart held by New York Public Library · via Wikimedia Commons — the work is centuries out of copyright.
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed pieces sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount (gold-ink editions on specialist press).
Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our charts cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans in existence, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the gold figures, the tiny stars, the cartouches — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.

From the same astronomer