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Epic nebula 56 EP

Eagle Nebula

RA 274.7343° · Dec -13.8454° · openngc

Real photograph of Eagle Nebula 📷 Real photo
ESO (CC BY 4.0)
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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
56 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • The Eagle Nebula (the Pillars of Creation) +22
  • Nebula +8
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Diffuse nebula +6
Total score 56

22 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Nebula · +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Diffuse nebula · +6
  • The Eagle Nebula (the Pillars of Creation) · +22

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A nebula: a cloud of interstellar gas and dust, thinner than the best vacuum ever made in a laboratory yet spanning light-years.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 6 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Serpens Cauda.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around June — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 101.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 9 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

aliases
Star Queen
constellation
Se2
dist ly
5762.4735
dso type
Neb
mag
6
name
Eagle Nebula
named
yes
radial velocity kms
10
redshift
0
size arcmin
5.05

Nearby objects

About Eagle Nebula

Eagle Nebula is an epic nebula. It lies about 5,762.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Se2 and shines at apparent magnitude 6.

A nebula: a cloud of interstellar gas and dust, thinner than the best vacuum ever made in a laboratory yet spanning light-years.

How to see it

Look for Eagle Nebula in the constellation Se2. At apparent magnitude 6, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Eagle Nebula 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 Eagle Nebula is an epic nebula

Eagle Nebula scores 56 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 22 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Nebula, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Diffuse nebula and The Eagle Nebula (the Pillars of Creation) — 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.