"GC" == Greg Crinklaw writes:

GC Magnificent Universe wrote:
Both studies find that the Orion Nebula is about 1,300 light-years
from Earth--over 200 light-years closer than previously thought.

GC At such a distance 200 ly is pretty much within the observational
GC error. Regardless, I sure wouldn't call a little more than 10%
GC "much closer" unless I was into writing hyperbolic press releases.
GC I for one will never understand why some feel astronomy needs all
GC that hyperbole. I mean, isn't the reality of it all exciting
GC enough?

I believe that one of the papers being described is Sandstrom et
al. (astro-ph/0706.2351). From the abstract:

Based on the parallax, we measure a distance of 389 +24/-21 parsecs
to the source. Our measurement places the Orion Nebula Cluster
considerably closer than the canonical distance of 480 +/- 80
parsecs determined by Genzel et al. (1981).

So the estimated observational error on the new parallax distance is
about 70 light years.

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