Planetary nebula
NGC 2438 (NGC2438)
In Puppis (Pup) • Magnitude 10.8 • 1.1 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with NGC 2438 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
Planetary nebula superimposed on the open cluster M46.
NGC 2438 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | N 2438 |
| Type | Planetary nebula |
| Constellation | Puppis (Pup) |
| Right ascension | 07h 41m 50s |
| Declination | -14° 44' 09" |
| Apparent magnitude | 10.80 |
| Surface brightness | 19.6 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 1.1 × 1.1 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 30° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image NGC 2438
NGC 2438 sits in the constellation Puppis at right ascension 07h 41m 50s and declination -14° 44' 09". 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, NGC 2438 typically appears small and intense, so a long focal length and OIII or Ha narrowband filters bring out structure.