Box Nebula
ILLUSTRATION FROM PLANETARY NEBULA · MAJOR AXIS 0.26′
OVERVIEW
] NEBULABox Nebula is a planetary nebula in the constellation Ophiuchus, 2736 parsecs from Earth as published by Stanghellini+ 2008 (about 8924 , converted by SpaceCatalog), shining at apparent magnitude 11.50 (). Other catalogues list it as HD 155752, IRAS 17112-1251 and IRAS F17112-1251, among 6 designations in total. It was discovered in 1876.
- WHAT IT IS
- Planetary nebula
- HOW FAR
- 8924
- HOW BIG ON THE SKY
- 16
- HOW BRIGHT (V)
The light arriving now left it that long ago.
Small enough that the full Moon would cover it several times over.
A small telescope reaches it.
THE MODEL
] LIGHT ALONG THE RAYCALCULATED · NOT AN OBSERVATION · ANGULAR SIZE AT THE CATALOGUED DISTANCE · PLANETARY NEBULA · MAJOR AXIS 0.26′ · NO SURFACE — DRAWN AS A VOLUME
A shell of gas thrown off a star. The ring is not drawn as a ring — the ray simply meets more gas where it passes along the shell's tangent than where it crosses the middle, and the arithmetic makes the rim. The shape of it is the catalogued class; the flattening is the catalogued axis ratio read as the object's own shape rather than as a tilt, because this is not a disc and its ellipticity is not an inclination. Nothing measured the depth, so what is drawn is the roundest object that matches the ellipse the catalogue holds. The colours are the emission lines themselves, through the same colour-matching functions the star colours use. Drag it, or use the arrow keys, to look from another direction. The stars behind are the 498,631 this catalogue holds real distances for, drawn from where the camera actually is — but every one of them is within 170 parsecs of the Sun and this object is much further out, so from here that whole neighbourhood is a knot in one direction and the rest of the sky is empty. The view you land on looks the other way; turn back towards the Sun and the stars come with it. What the readout says is which of the two the frame is pointed at. The emptiness is not a missing backdrop — it is the edge of what this catalogue has measured.
OBSERVING
] FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see Box Nebula 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 Box Nebula is worth going out for.
THROUGH AN EYEPIECE
] 150 MM TELESCOPE · 25 MM EYEPIECEOut of reach of binoculars; a 150 mm telescope reaches it. Box Nebula covers 16″ of sky against a of 1.08°, so at 48× it is a speck in a wide field.
- 48×
- 1.08
- 1.25
- 13.0
- SIZE ON THE SKY
- 16
- FILLS OF THE FIELD
- 0% of the width
- APPARENT MAGNITUDE ()
- 11.50 · within reach
Box Nebula is not a point of light, so the limit above is the wrong one to hold it against: the same brightness spread over 16″ 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 J2026.8Where 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
- 22.2
- PROPER MOTION SINCE
- none published
Computed for 2026-10-11 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for Box Nebula, 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. The catalogue it came from publishes no error for that position, so nothing here says how far this arithmetic can be trusted — the digits above are as precise as the place they were computed from, and no more. Aberration, parallax and refraction are left out. Aberration swings every position by up to twenty arcseconds over a year; parallax stays under an arcsecond for all but the nearest stars; refraction is nothing overhead and about half a degree at the horizon, where it answers to the air, not the sky. The same figure for any date.
CATALOG DATA
] 13 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 ()
- Apparent magnitude ()
- Apparent magnitude ( band)
- 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.
- −40
- Redshift (z)
- Major axis
- 0.26
WHEN IT WAS FOUND
Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.
- Discovered by
- Wilhelm Tempel
OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS
The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.
- OpenNGC type code
- PN
- Wikidata item
- Q976581
- Wikipedia article
- NGC 6309
WHERE THESE FIGURES CAME FROM
Which catalogue, paper or model each of the fields above was read from, where the source named one.
- Distance catalogue entry
- NGC 6309
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 6 DESIGNATIONS- Common name Box Nebula
- HD HD 155752
- IRAS IRAS 17112-1251
- IRAS IRAS F17112-1251
- NGC NGC 6309
- PN PN G009.6+14.8
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.
- SIMBADNGC 6309
Cross-identifications, measured values and the reference behind each of them.
- ADSobject:"NGC 6309"
Papers indexed against this object rather than against the string, newest first.
- VizieR8″ around 258.5179 -12.9106
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. Box Nebula [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/ngc-6309
@misc{spacecatalog_ngc-6309,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{Box Nebula}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/ngc-6309},
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.
That catalogue asks for this acknowledgement: OpenNGC, Mattia Verga (github.com/mattiaverga/OpenNGC). Fields derived from it stay under CC BY-SA 4.0.