Orion Nebula, Italy

You don't need an apochromatic refractor to see this notable nebula, but it sure helps. That's just technical talk for a type of telescope commonly used for astrophotography, available (albeit for a pretty penny) to home astronomers—like the one who caught this photo of the Orion Nebula from their backyard in Italy. Unless you live in the heart of the city, you too can see this space object from home: Its apparent magnitude of 4.0 means it's fairly faint but visible from all but the most light-polluted places, looking much like a small star to the naked eye. Just look for Orion's trademark triple-star belt and you'll find the nebula glimmering amid a row of stars close by.

The Orion Nebula (M42) is visible here as a vast cosmic cloud of gas and dust. It is a diffuse nebula and one of the brightest star-forming regions visible from Earth, located about 1,344 light-years away. Within its glowing expanse, new stars are actively forming from collapsing gas and dust, powered by the intense ultraviolet radiation of young, massive stars. Studying these stellar nurseries provides astronomers with crucial insights into the earliest stages of planetary system formation.