Anomaly nebula 80 EP

Eagle Nebula

RA 274.7007° · Dec -13.8072° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 8 badges

80 pts · Anomaly

Anomaly 120 pts → Mythic

The Eagle Nebula (the Pillars of Creation) +22
Messier object +12
Bigger on the sky than the full Moon +12
Nebula +8
Has a proper name +8
Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
Bright deep-sky object +6
Diffuse nebula +6

Total score 80

40 more points to reach Mythic.

Badges

Nebula · +8
Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
Messier object · +12
Bright deep-sky object · +6
Has a proper name · +8
Diffuse nebula · +6
Bigger on the sky than the full Moon · +12
The Eagle Nebula (the Pillars of Creation) · +22

Trivia

Hard to believe

Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M16.

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 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Serpens Cauda.
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 June — 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. ≈ 101.3 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation: Se2
dist ly: 5762.4735
dso type: Neb
mag: 6
messier: yes
messier number: 016
name: Eagle Nebula
named: yes
radial velocity kms: 10
redshift: 0
size arcmin: 120

Nearby objects

About Eagle Nebula

Eagle Nebula is an anomaly nebula. It lies about 5,762.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Se2 and shines at apparent magnitude 6.

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 Eagle Nebula in the constellation Se2. At apparent magnitude 6, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Eagle 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 Eagle Nebula is an anomaly nebula

Eagle Nebula scores 80 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the anomaly tier. Another 40 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 8 science badges — Nebula, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Messier object, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Diffuse nebula, Bigger on the sky than the full Moon and The Eagle Nebula (the Pillars of Creation) — 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.