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Rare nebula 42 EP

Pelican Nebula

RA 312.7530° · Dec 44.4015° · openngc

Real photograph of Pelican Nebula 📷 Real photo
Miodrag Sekulic (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
42 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Star-forming region +14
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon +12
  • Nebula +8
  • Has a proper name +8
Total score 42

8 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Nebula · +8
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Star-forming region · +14
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon · +12

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 8 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Cygnus.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around August — 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.

What's in a name

  • Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.

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
Cyg
dso type
HII
mag
8
name
Pelican Nebula
named
yes
size arcmin
60

Nearby objects

About Pelican Nebula

Pelican Nebula is a rare nebula. It sits in the constellation Cyg and shines at apparent magnitude 8.

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 Pelican Nebula in the constellation Cyg. At apparent magnitude 8, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, Pelican 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 Pelican Nebula is a rare nebula

Pelican Nebula scores 42 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Nebula, Has a proper name, Star-forming region and Bigger on the sky than the full Moon — 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.