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Uncommon nebula 29 EP

NGC 5462

RA 210.9708° · Dec 54.3656° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Star-forming region +14
  • Nebula +8
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Nebula · +8
  • Star-forming region · +14
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

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 18.2 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Ursa Major.
  • 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 April — 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
UMa
dso type
HII
mag
18.17
name
NGC 5462
size arcmin
0.13

About NGC 5462

NGC 5462 is an uncommon nebula. It sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 18.17.

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 NGC 5462 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 18.17, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 5462 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 5462 is an uncommon nebula

NGC 5462 scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Nebula, Star-forming region, Never sets (northern circumpolar) 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.