About NGC 1745
NGC 1745 is a common nebula. It sits in the constellation Dor and shines at apparent magnitude 13.4.
A nebula: a cloud of interstellar gas and dust, thinner than the best vacuum ever made in a laboratory yet spanning light-years.
Common nebula 17 EP
NGC 1745
RA 73.5859° · Dec -69.1589° · openngc
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesCommon 22 pts → Uncommon
- Nebula +8
- Diffuse nebula +6
- Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 17
5 more points to reach Uncommon.
Badges
- Nebula · +8
- Diffuse nebula · +6
- Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3
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.
Find it in the sky
- How to spot it. At magnitude 13.4 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. Nebular colours are chemistry made visible — red for hydrogen, teal for oxygen, blue where starlight is merely scattered.
How we came to know it
- The New General Catalogue. Its NGC number comes from J. L. E. Dreyer's 1888 catalogue, itself built on decades of sky sweeps by William Herschel and his sister Caroline.
Properties
- constellation
- Dor
- dso type
- Neb
- mag
- 13.4
- name
- NGC 1745
- size arcmin
- 1.2
Nearby objects
How to see it
Look for NGC 1745 in the constellation Dor. At apparent magnitude 13.4, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.
Like any astronomical target, NGC 1745 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 NGC 1745 is a common nebula
NGC 1745 scores 17 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Nebula, Diffuse nebula 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.