Object Description

The French astronomer Camille Guillaume Bigourdan discovered a small, faint nebula on 8^th December 1890. John L. E. Dreyer included it 1910 in his «Second Index Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars» under the designation IC 2120. ^{[196, 315]}

IC 2120 caused a bit of confusion: The «Strasbourg-ESO Catalog of Galactic Planetary Nebulae» published in 1992 lists IC 2120 as a possible planetary nebula under the designation PK 169-0.1. ^[141] In the 2001 edition of the same IC is listed as a misclassified PN with the note «compact H-II region». ^[146] Simbad also offers this version. ^[145] The «NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database» (NED) explains IC 2120 as a sighting of comet 113P/Spitaler, which was mistakenly mistaken for a nebula. ^[194] Sky Safari 6 thinks of IC 2120 that it is a non-existent deep sky object. ^[149] Even Wikipedia disagrees: The German edition brings the version of erroneous comets and references NED, while the French edition lists IC 2120 as a compact H-II region and is based on Simbad. ^{[363, 364]}

As you can see in the pictures, the small, round shape of IC 2120 with the star in the middle really looks like a planetary nebula, but it is a compact H-II region. Simbad gives 1388 parsecs (about 4500 light years) as the distance. ^[145] Other sources give 0.9 kpc to 1.86 kpc. ^[365]

Finder Chart

The galactic nebula IC 2120 is located in the constellation Auriga, which is best visible from September to April.

Visual Observation

Description pending ...