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Rare nebula 39 EP

Bubble Nebula

RA 350.1900° · Dec 61.2124° · openngc

Real photograph of Bubble Nebula 📷 Real photo
NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team
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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Star-forming region +14
  • Nebula +8
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Big on the sky +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Nebula · +8
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Star-forming region · +14
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • 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 11 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Cassiopeia.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around September — 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

constellation
Cas
dso type
HII
mag
11
name
Bubble Nebula
named
yes
size arcmin
15

Nearby objects

About Bubble Nebula

Bubble Nebula is a rare nebula. It sits in the constellation Cas and shines at apparent magnitude 11.

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 Bubble Nebula in the constellation Cas. At apparent magnitude 11, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

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

Bubble Nebula scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Nebula, Has a proper name, Star-forming region, Never sets (northern circumpolar) 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.