IC 2948

Right Ascension	11 : 35.3 (h:m)
Declination	-63 : 01.1 (deg:m)
Distance	(kly)
Visual brightness	(mag)
Apparent dimension	40. (arc min)

Discovered by Royal Harvard Frost in 1906-8.

This bright diffuse starforming nebula around the star Lambda Centauri is located within a few degrees of the more popular Eta Carinae Nebula.

The open cluster at the lower right is NGC 3766 (the Pearl Cluster). The strip of four bright stars in the centre of this object is open cluster IC 2944. The round nebula upper left is RCW 60 and the small nebula found centre top is RCW 61. This object is also known as the "Running Chicken Nebula."

The image in this page was obtained by Ray Palmer. It was taken on March 29th, 2006 from Golden Grove Observatory, Western Australia. Equipment used to capture the image was a Takahashi Epsilon e160 mounted on a Losmandy G-11at f/3.3, exposed for 20 min on Kodak Elite Chrome 200 unhypered.