menu
A Complete Guide to the Solar System and the Night Sky
Home
Search Objects
Major Solar System Objects
Comets
Asteroids
Spacecrafts
Star Maps
Orbits
public  Greenwich, UK Greenwich, UK  ⓘ
Timezone: Europe/London
Sunrise: 5:05 
Transit: 12:56 
Sunset: 20:48
warning Set your observing location to get relevant data
Search  close

In Evidence

New Comet C/2025 J1 (Borisov) Discovered in May 2025
Detailed information about the discovery of Comet C/2025 J1 (Borisov) and pointers to useful resources to track and observe it. Read more...

Other deep sky objects in Virgo
All Constellations »  Virgo »  Deep Sky Objects » 

IC 972 - Planetary Nebula in Virgo

Below the horizon.  Rise: 18:52 | Tran: 23:18 | Set: 3:48
Alt: -4.16°   Az: 112.88°   Direction: East-South-East

IC 972 is a Planetary Nebula in the Virgo constellation. IC 972 is situated close to the celestial equator and, as such, it is at least partly visible from both hemispheres in certain times of the year. Given its visual magnitude of 13.9, IC 972 is visible with the help of a telescope having an aperture of 14 inches (350mm) or more.

The image below is a photograph of IC 972 from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2 - see the credits section) taken in the red channel. The area of sky represented in the image is 0.5000x0.5000 degrees (30.00x30.00 arcmins).

Image of IC 972 - Planetary Nebula in Virgo star
/>
DSS2 image of IC 972 in the Red band. The green region on the image is a representation of the major (0.7 arcmin) and minor (0.7 arcmin) axes of the object's apparent size.

Celestial Coordinates

Apparent

14h 05m 49s
-17° 20’ 56”
19h 02m 47s
09h 08m 37s

J2000

14h 04m 26s
-17° 13’ 41”

Finder Chart

The simplified sky charts below show the position of IC 972 in the sky. The first chart has a field of view of 60° while the second one has a field of view of 10°.

loader
  Loading map...
Finder chart for IC 972 - Planetary Nebula in Virgo.

loader
  Loading map...
Finder chart for IC 972 - Planetary Nebula in Virgo.

Photometric Information

The following table lists the magnitude of IC 972 in different bands of the electomagnetic spectrum (when available), from the B band (445nm wavelength, corresponding to the Blue color), to the V band ( 551nm wavelength, corresponding to Green/Yellow color), to the J, H, K bands (corresponding to 1220nm, 1630nm, 2190nm wavelengths respectively, which are colors not visible to the human eye).

14.9
13.9
15.78
15.41
15.16

For more information about photometry in astronomy, check the photometric system article on Wikipedia.

Apparent Size

The following table reports IC 972 apparent angular size. The green area displayed on top of the DSS2 image of IC 972 is a visual representation of it.
0.7 arcmin
0.7 arcmin

Rise and Set Times

Location: Greenwich, UK
Latitude: 51° 28’ 47” N
Longitude: 0° 00’ 00” E
Timezone: Europe/London

Today's IC 972 - Planetary Nebula in Virgo rise, transit and set times from Greenwich, UK are the following (all times relative to the local timezone Europe/London):

Azimuth: 107.3°
Max altitude: 21.2°
Azimuth: 252.7°