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Uncommon nebula 25 EP

IC 2116

RA 74.3178° · Dec -66.3890° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Star-forming region +14
  • Nebula +8
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Nebula · +8
  • Star-forming region · +14
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. An H II region: a cloud of hydrogen being ionised by the ultraviolet flood from hot young stars inside it. Every one is a star factory caught mid-production.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 14.2 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Dorado.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around December — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. That signature crimson is hydrogen-alpha at 656 nanometres — electrons falling back onto protons, one photon at a time.

How we came to know it

  • The Index Catalogue. The IC was the 1895 and 1908 supplement to the NGC — the first catalogue in history to be filled largely with objects found on photographic plates rather than by eye.

Properties

constellation
Dor
dso type
HII
mag
14.21
name
IC 2116
size arcmin
0.6

Nearby objects

About IC 2116

IC 2116 is an uncommon nebula. It sits in the constellation Dor and shines at apparent magnitude 14.21.

An H II region: a cloud of hydrogen being ionised by the ultraviolet flood from hot young stars inside it. Every one is a star factory caught mid-production.

How to see it

Look for IC 2116 in the constellation Dor. At apparent magnitude 14.21, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 2116 is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why IC 2116 is an uncommon nebula

IC 2116 scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Nebula, Star-forming region and Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.