The Cat's Paw Nebula
Right Ascension | 17 : 20.5 (h:m) |
---|---|
Declination | -35 : 43 (deg:m) |
Distance | (kly) |
Visual brightness | (mag) |
Apparent dimension | 40. (arc min) |
Discovered by John Herschel on June 7, 1837.
This beautiful diffuse starforming nebula resembles a huge paw print in the heavens. It can be located near the tip of the Scorpion's tail in Scorpius.
John Herschel discovered this nebula in 1837 from the Cape of Good Hope, and cataloged it as h 3678 in his 1847 catalog. It became GC 4288 in his General Catalogue of 1864, and NGC 6334 in J.L.E. Dreyer's NGC.
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 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.