Emission nebula
Omega Nebula (M17)
In Sagittarius (Sgr) • Magnitude 6.0 • 46 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Omega Nebula pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
One of the brightest and most massive star-forming regions in the Milky Way, radiating enough energy to outshine a million Suns. The cloud contains enough raw material to assemble around 800 new Sun-like stars — a whole stellar generation currently in the making.
Omega Nebula at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M17, N 6618 |
| Type | Emission nebula |
| Constellation | Sagittarius (Sgr) |
| Right ascension | 18h 20m 49s |
| Declination | -16° 10' 48" |
| Apparent magnitude | 6.00 |
| Surface brightness | 13.0 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 46.0 × 37.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 29° |
| Best imaging months | Mar, Apr, May |
How to image Omega Nebula
Omega Nebula sits in the constellation Sagittarius at right ascension 18h 20m 49s and declination -16° 10' 48". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window. As an emission nebula, Omega Nebula responds very well to dual-narrowband filters under city skies.