About NGC 2068
NGC 2068 is a rare nebula. It sits in the constellation Ori and shines at apparent magnitude 8.
A reflection nebula. It produces no light at all; it is dust catching the glare of a nearby star and scattering it back at us.
Rare nebula 36 EP
NGC 2068
RA 86.6909° · Dec 0.0793° · openngc
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Score breakdown
· 4 badgesRare 50 pts → Epic
- Messier object +12
- Reflection nebula +10
- Nebula +8
- In Orion's hunting ground +6
Total score 36
14 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
- Nebula · +8
- Messier object · +12
- Reflection nebula · +10
- In Orion's hunting ground · +6
Trivia
Hard to believe
- Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M78.
What it actually is
- What it actually is. A reflection nebula. It produces no light at all; it is dust catching the glare of a nearby star and scattering it back at us.
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 Orion.
- Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
- 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. It looks blue for exactly the reason Earth's sky is blue: fine dust scatters short blue wavelengths far more efficiently than long red ones.
How we came to know it
- Messier's anti-list. Charles Messier was a comet hunter, and he compiled his famous catalogue in the 1770s and 80s purely as a list of fuzzy things that are NOT comets. History remembers the distractions and forgets the comets.
- 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
- Ori
- dso type
- RfN
- mag
- 8
- messier
- yes
- messier number
- 078
- name
- NGC 2068
- radial velocity kms
- 63
- redshift
- 0.0002
- size arcmin
- 4.5
Nearby objects
How to see it
Look for NGC 2068 in the constellation Ori. At apparent magnitude 8, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, NGC 2068 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 2068 is a rare nebula
NGC 2068 scores 36 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 14 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 4 science badges — Nebula, Messier object, Reflection nebula and In Orion's hunting ground — 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.