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Rare nebula 36 EP

NGC 6165

RA 248.5144° · Dec -48.1505° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
36 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Nebula +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Diffuse nebula +6
Total score 36

14 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Nebula · +8
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Diffuse nebula · +6
  • Coming towards us · +10

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.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 6.7 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Norma.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around May — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 65 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).
  • Fastest probe ever. ≈ 5.8 million years even at the Parker Solar Probe's 192 km/s.

Properties

constellation
Nor
dist ly
3700.851
dso type
Neb
mag
6.71
name
NGC 6165
radial velocity kms
-54
size arcmin
2.5

Nearby objects

About NGC 6165

NGC 6165 is a rare nebula. It lies about 3,700.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Nor and shines at apparent magnitude 6.71.

A nebula: a cloud of interstellar gas and dust, thinner than the best vacuum ever made in a laboratory yet spanning light-years.

How to see it

Look for NGC 6165 in the constellation Nor. At apparent magnitude 6.71, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6165 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 6165 is a rare nebula

NGC 6165 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 5 science badges — Nebula, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Bright deep-sky object, Diffuse nebula and Coming towards us — 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.