An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
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A blue star with → apparent visual magnitude 4.59 in → Orion's Sword. Also known as → c Orionis, HD 37018, HR 1892, and HIP 26237. More specifically, it is a → main sequence star of → spectral type B1 V, lying in the → H II region→ NGC 1977. 42 Orionis is approximately 900 → light-years away based on parallax. It is the major source for ionizing photons in NGC 1977. 42 Ori is a → mutiple star system. The primary star, Aa, of magnitude 6.3 has a → companion companion Ab at a separation of 0.16'', and a more distant companion B of 7.5 magnitude at 1.6'' separation. An irradiated → circumstellar disk near 42 Ori has been detected by Bally et al. (2012) in the → HST image using Hα filter (F658N). They identified a bent → protostellar jet HH1064 from Parenago 2042 (the Spindle) in NGC 1977 with numerous → bow shock features. They argue that the arc feature in the Hα Spindle is centered on the star and its brightened side of the arc is facing toward 42 Ori, suggesting that it may be a → proplyd (Kim et al., 2016, arXiv::1606.08271).

Number 42 in → Flamsteed designation; Orionis, genitive of → Orion.