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Common nebula 16 EP

NGC 1936

RA 80.5582° · Dec -67.9783° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
16 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Nebula +8
  • Emission nebula (glowing gas) +8
Total score 16

6 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Nebula · +8
  • Emission nebula (glowing gas) · +8

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. An emission nebula, generating its own light: its gas is ionised by nearby stars and glows in its own right rather than reflecting anything.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 11.6 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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 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
EmN
mag
11.6
name
NGC 1936
size arcmin
1

Nearby objects

About NGC 1936

NGC 1936 is a common nebula. It sits in the constellation Dor and shines at apparent magnitude 11.6.

An emission nebula, generating its own light: its gas is ionised by nearby stars and glows in its own right rather than reflecting anything.

How to see it

Look for NGC 1936 in the constellation Dor. At apparent magnitude 11.6, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 1936 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 1936 is a common nebula

NGC 1936 scores 16 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Nebula and Emission nebula (glowing gas) — 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.