Emission nebula
NGC 6559 (NGC6559)
In Sagittarius (Sgr) • Magnitude 99.0 • 15 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with NGC 6559 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
A colorful star-forming complex in Sagittarius.
NGC 6559 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | N 6559 |
| Type | Emission nebula |
| Constellation | Sagittarius (Sgr) |
| Right ascension | 18h 09m 57s |
| Declination | -24° 06' 23" |
| Apparent magnitude | 99.00 |
| Angular size | 15.0 × 10.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 21° |
| Best imaging months | Jun, Jul, Aug |
How to image NGC 6559
NGC 6559 sits in the constellation Sagittarius at right ascension 18h 09m 57s and declination -24° 06' 23". 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, NGC 6559 responds very well to dual-narrowband filters under city skies.