A parallactic distance of 389-21+24 parsecs to the orion nebula cluster from very long baseline array observations

We determine the parallax and proper motion of the flaring, nonthermal radio star GMR A, a member of the Orion Nebula Cluster, using Very Long Baseline Array observations. Based on the parallax, we measure a distance of 389(-21)(+24) pc to the source. Our measurement places the Orion Nebula Cluster considerably closer than the canonical distance of 480 +/- 80 pc determined by Genzel et al. A change of this magnitude in distance lowers the luminosities of the stars in the cluster by a factor of similar to 1.5. We briefly discuss two effects of this change-an increase in the age spread of the premain-sequence stars, and better agreement between the zero-age main sequence and the temperatures and luminosities of massive stars.