Astronomical data · SIMBAD
- Object type
- PN
- Distance
- 7,389 light-years
- Redshift
- z = -0.00013308321841265514
- Coordinates
- RA 188.2786° · Dec 82.5639°
via SIMBAD · CDS Strasbourg
Key facts
- Right ascension
- 12 33 06
- Declination
- +82 ° 34 ′ 00 ″
- Distance
- Roughly 4.5⋅10 ly
- Constellation
- Camelopardalis
- Radius
- Core: 0.2 ly
- Designations
- IC 3568, Perek-Kohoutek 123+34.1 (PK 123+34.1), HD 109540 (central star)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Distance from Earth
- 2738
- Image
- IC3568.jpg
Show 9 more facts
- catalog code
- WEB 10900
- apparent magnitude
- 10.844
- right ascension
- 188.2786292
- declination
- 82.5635972
- Commons category
- IC 3568
- time of discovery or invention
- 1900-00-00
- radial velocity
- -39.9
- declination component of proper motion
- 8
- right ascension component of proper motion
- 27
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~2 min read
Article
False-colour image of the bright central region of IC 3568. This is the image that gave the nebula its common name. IC 3568 is a planetary nebula that is 1.3 kiloparsecs (4500 ly) away from Earth in the constellation of Camelopardalis (just 7.5 degrees from Polaris). It is a relatively young nebula and has a core diameter of only about 0.4 light years. It was dubbed the Lemon Slice Nebula by Jim Kaler, due to its appearance in one false-colour image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Lemon Slice Nebula is one of the most simple nebulae known, with an almost perfectly spherical morphology. The core of the nebula does not have a distinctly visible structure in formation and is mostly composed of ionized helium. A faint halo of interstellar dust surrounds the nebula.
The central star of the planetary nebula is a magnitude 12.8 O-type star with a spectral type of O(H)3. It is estimated to have a mass less than the Sun, a temperature of over 50,000 K, and a bolometric luminosity of about 2,400 L☉.