Near the head of Orion there is also a population of young stars that is centered on Meissa.

The Orion complex is one of the most active regions of nearby stellar formation visible in the night sky, and is home to both protoplanetary discs and very young stars.

The following is a list of notable regions within the larger complex: A more complete list can be found for example in Maddalena et al. (1986) Table 1[5] The giant molecular cloud Orion A is the most active star-forming region in the local neighbourhood of the Sun.

In the last few million years about 3000 young stellar objects were formed in this region, including about 190 protostars and about 2600 pre-main sequence stars.

The "head" of the cloud, which also contains the Orion Nebula is about 1300 light-years (400 parsecs) away from the Sun.

[10][7] The Orion OB1 association represents different stellar populations that are superimposed along our line of sight.

[11] Parts of the Orion-Eridanus superbubble were first seen as Barnard's Loop in Hydrogen-alpha images that warp around the eastern portion of Orion.