In an article appearing on KenCroswell.com Ken reports that astronomer Rob Jeffries at Keele University in England has calculated a new distance to the Orion Nebula by using the rotation period, and rate of spin of thirty-four G, K, and M stars in the cluster to calculate their diameter. He then used the diameter to recalculate the luminosities. The results indicate that the Orion Nebula is about 200 light years closer to us than we previously thought. This also has implications for the age of the Nebula, which Jefferies now calculates at 1.5 million years instead of slightly under 1 million years.
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