OVERVIEW
] NEBULAM78 is a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion, shining at apparent magnitude 8.00 (). It is catalogued as Ced 55u, IRAS 05442-0000 and MWSC 664, among 5 designations in total. It was discovered in 1780.
The brightest reflection nebula in the sky: not glowing on its own, but scattering the light of hot young stars embedded in it.
- WHAT IT IS
- Reflection nebula
- HOW BIG ON THE SKY
- 4.5
- HOW BRIGHT (V)
Small enough that the full Moon would cover it several times over.
Binoculars reach it; the naked eye does not.
IMAGES
] 4 FRAMES- ESO/Igor Chekalin
CC BY 4.0 - Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)
Public domain - ESO/Igor Chekalin
CC BY 4.0 - SDSS
CC BY 4.0
OBSERVING
] FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see M78 for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.
Say where you are, and this line says when M78 is worth going out for.
THROUGH AN EYEPIECE
] 150 MM TELESCOPE · 25 MM EYEPIECEToo faint for your eyes alone. Binoculars reach it. M78 covers 4.5′ of sky against a of 1.08°, so at 48× it is a small patch, centred.
- 48×
- 1.08
- 1.25
- 13.0
- SIZE ON THE SKY
- 4.5
- FILLS OF THE FIELD
- 7% of the width
- APPARENT MAGNITUDE ()
- 8.00 · within reach
M78 is not a point of light, so the limit above is the wrong one to hold it against: the same brightness spread over 4.5′ of sky is harder than a star of it, and goes first. Catalogued sizes are measured to a photographic contour, and the part an eye sees is usually smaller.
APPARENT PLACE
] EQUINOX J2026.7Where a telescope has to be pointed today, which is not quite where the catalogue records the object: the coordinate grid itself has turned since the year 2000 the catalogue is referred to.
- RIGHT ASCENSION
- DECLINATION
- GRID TURNED SINCE
- 20.7
- PROPER MOTION SINCE
- none published
Computed for 2026-08-27 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for M78, so nothing here moves the object; what separates this from the catalogued position above is the coordinate grid turning under it — about fifty arcseconds a year of precession since 2000, and the small nodding of the Earth’s axis on top of that. Aberration and refraction are not included, and neither is parallax; each is under an arcminute, which is also about as well as the catalogued position is known. The same figure for any date.
CATALOG DATA
] 9 FIELDSThe raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.
HOW BRIGHT IT IS
What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.
- Apparent magnitude ()
- Apparent magnitude ()
WHERE IT IS AND HOW IT MOVES
Position, motion across the sky and the size it covers on it. These are measurements of the object as seen from here, so every one of them depends on where here is.
- Radial velocity
- 63
- Redshift (z)
- Major axis
- 4.5
WHEN IT WAS FOUND
Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.
- Discovered by
- Pierre Méchain
OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS
The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.
- OpenNGC type code
- RfN
- Wikidata item
- Q14018
- Wikipedia article
- Messier 78
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 5 DESIGNATIONS- Cederblad Ced 55u
- IRAS IRAS 05442-0000
- Messier M 78
- MWSC MWSC 664
- NGC NGC 2068
LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE
] 3 SERVICESEach link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.
- SIMBADM78
Cross-identifications, measured values and the reference behind each of them.
- ADSobject:"M78"
Papers indexed against this object rather than against the string, newest first.
- VizieR135″ around 86.6909 +0.0793
Every published table with a row at this position, searched by coordinates rather than by name.
CITE THIS PAGE
] DR1This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.
SpaceCatalog. M78 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/m78
@misc{spacecatalog_m78,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{M78}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/m78},
note = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from OpenNGC.}
}The values above were taken from OpenNGC — CC-BY-SA-4.0. Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue, and its licence is share-alike: the terms reach whatever you build from these rows.