Planetary nebula
Owl Nebula (M97)
In Ursa Major (UMa) • Magnitude 9.9 • 3.4 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Owl Nebula pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
A nearly circular planetary nebula in Ursa Major, named for two darker circular patches that give it the appearance of a wide-eyed owl. It is expanding at about 40 km/s, and in a few tens of thousands of years it will have thinned out and faded below detectability — a fleeting cosmic sculpture.
Owl Nebula at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M97, N 3587 |
| Type | Planetary nebula |
| Constellation | Ursa Major (UMa) |
| Right ascension | 11h 14m 49s |
| Declination | +55° 01' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 9.90 |
| Surface brightness | 13.5 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 3.4 × 3.3 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 80° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image Owl Nebula
Owl Nebula sits in the constellation Ursa Major at right ascension 11h 14m 49s and declination +55° 01' 12". 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 a planetary nebula, Owl Nebula typically appears small and intense, so a long focal length and OIII or Ha narrowband filters bring out structure.