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Rare nebula 41 EP

Tarantula Nebula

RA 84.6765° · Dec -69.1009° · openngc

Real photograph of Tarantula Nebula 📷 Real photo
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team
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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
41 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Star-forming region +14
  • Nebula +8
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Big on the sky +5
Total score 41

9 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Nebula · +8
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Star-forming region · +14
  • Big on the sky · +5

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 7.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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.

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 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

aliases
30 Dor Cluster
constellation
Dor
dso type
HII
mag
7.25
name
Tarantula Nebula
named
yes
radial velocity kms
251
redshift
0.0008
size arcmin
16

Nearby objects

About Tarantula Nebula

Tarantula Nebula is a rare nebula. It sits in the constellation Dor and shines at apparent magnitude 7.25.

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 Tarantula Nebula in the constellation Dor. At apparent magnitude 7.25, it is an easy target for binoculars.

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

Tarantula Nebula scores 41 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Nebula, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Star-forming region and Big on the sky — 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.