Nessie

Nessie is a colloquial name for a long, filament-shaped infrared dark cloud within the Orion star-forming region. Nessie appears to lie in the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, possibly being the "middle" of the arm. If so, its distance is about 3.1 kpc, its width is on the order of 0.5 pc, and its length depends upon interpretation of the data, early thought making it 80 pc, later 160 pc or possibly 430 pc.