Helix Nebula
OVERVIEW
] NEBULAHelix Nebula is a planetary nebula in the constellation Aquarius, 655.0 from Earth, shining at apparent magnitude 7.30 (). It is catalogued as C 63, ESO 602-022 and ESO 602-22, among 9 designations in total. It was discovered in 1824.
The closest bright planetary nebula, a huge eye of glowing gas whose apparent size is half that of the full Moon.
- WHAT IT IS
- Planetary nebula
- HOW FAR
- 655.0
- HOW BIG ON THE SKY
- 16.3
- HOW BRIGHT (V)
The light arriving now left it that long ago.
About 0.5 of the full Moon's width.
Binoculars reach it; the naked eye does not.
IMAGES
] 4 FRAMES- NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI) and T. A. Rector (NRAO)
Public domain - NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz.
Public domain - NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO)
Public domain - NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO)
Public domain
OBSERVING
] FROM WHERE YOU AREWhat it takes to see Helix 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 Helix Nebula is worth going out for.
THROUGH AN EYEPIECE
] 150 MM TELESCOPE · 25 MM EYEPIECEToo faint for your eyes alone. Binoculars reach it. Helix Nebula covers 16.3′ of sky against a of 1.08°, so at 48× it is comfortably framed.
- 48×
- 1.08
- 1.25
- 13.0
- SIZE ON THE SKY
- 16.3
- FILLS OF THE FIELD
- 25% of the width
- APPARENT MAGNITUDE ()
- 7.30 · within reach
Helix Nebula is not a point of light, so the limit above is the wrong one to hold it against: the same brightness spread over 16.3′ 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
- 22.1
- PROPER MOTION SINCE
- none published
Computed for 2026-08-27 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for Helix 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. 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
] 14 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.
- Radial velocity
- −15
- Redshift (z)
- Major axis
- 16.33
WHEN IT WAS FOUND
Who first saw it, from where, and by what method.
- Discovered by
- Karl Ludwig Harding
OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS
The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.
- Also known as
- Eye of God, Eye of Sauron, The Helix
- OpenNGC type code
- PN
- Wikidata item
- Q97017154
- Wikipedia article
- Helix Nebula
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 7293
ALSO KNOWN AS
] 9 DESIGNATIONS- Caldwell C 63
- Common name Helix Nebula
- ESO ESO 602-022
- ESO ESO 602-22
- Gliese GJ 9785
- IRAS IRAS 22267-2102
- IRAS IRAS X2226-210
- NGC NGC 7293
- PN PN G036.1-57.1
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 7293
Cross-identifications, measured values and the reference behind each of them.
- ADSobject:"NGC 7293"
Papers indexed against this object rather than against the string, newest first.
- VizieR490″ around 337.4107 -20.8373
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. Helix Nebula [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/ngc-7293
@misc{spacecatalog_ngc-7293,
author = {{SpaceCatalog}},
title = {{Helix Nebula}},
howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
year = {2026},
url = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/ngc-7293},
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.
RECENT ACTIVITY
] 1 ITEMS- SDSS-V Local Volume Mapper (LVM): Helix Nebula public data, Data Analysis Pipeline data products2026-02-10 · arXiv · PAPER · S. F. Sánchez, J. E. Méndez-Delgado, A. Mejía-Narváez, C. Román-Zuñiga, O. V. Egorov, C. Morisset
arXiv · UPDATED DAILY