Key facts
- Right ascension
- 19 44 48.2
- Declination
- +50 ° 31 ′ 30.3 ″
- Distance
- ~2000 ly
- Apparent dimensions v
- 27″ × 24″
- Constellation
- Cygnus
- Radius
- 0.22 x 0.20 ly
- Designations
- HD 186924, SAO 31951, Caldwell 15
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Constellation
- Cygnus
- Distance from Earth
- 1590
- Image
- NGC 6826HSTFull.jpg
Show 13 more facts
- spectral class
- O3f
- catalog code
- Caldwell 15
- epoch
- J2000.0
- declination
- 50.52506969910030
- Commons category
- NGC 6826
- discoverer or inventor
- William Herschel
- time of discovery or invention
- 1793-09-06
- right ascension component of proper motion
- -13
- apparent magnitude
- 8.944
- right ascension
- 296.20062534811330
- parallax
- 0.2
- radial velocity
- -6.2
- declination component of proper motion
- -11
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
NGC 6826 (also known as Caldwell 15) is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Cygnus. It is commonly referred to as the "Blinking Planetary", although many other nebulae exhibit such "blinking". When viewed through a small telescope, the brightness of the central star overwhelms the eye when viewed directly, obscuring the surrounding nebula. However, it can be viewed well using averted vision, which causes it to "blink" in and out of view as the observer's eye wanders.
A distinctive feature of this nebula are the two bright patches on either side, which are known as Fast Low-Ionization Emission Regions, or FLIERS. They appear to be relatively young, moving outwards at supersonic speeds.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “NGC 6826” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.