The sky around Hind's Variable Nebula at true scale, north up and east left, with stars to magnitude 8. The circles show the field of a low-power eyepiece and of 10×50 binoculars.
Hind's Variable Nebula is a variable reflection nebula in Taurus, 481 light-years away
Hind's Variable Nebula (Sh2-238, Hind's Nebula, NGC 1555, vdB 28) is a variable reflection nebula in the constellation Taurus, 481 light-years away. spans 1.8′ × 1.4′ of sky, about 0.3 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in January.
Nebula: a cloud of gas and dust. Emission nebulae glow on their own, lit by ultraviolet light from hot young stars; reflection nebulae shine by starlight scattered from dust; dark nebulae block the light behind them.
Hind's Variable Nebula is Sh2-238 in the Sharpless catalog
Stewart Sharpless listed it in his catalog of H II regions (1959), drawn from the red and blue prints of the Palomar Sky Survey. He rated each region's brightness on a scale of 1 to 3; Sh2-238 is bright (class 3 of 3). It is also listed as vdB 28.
Hind's Variable Nebula is vdB 28 in the Van den Bergh catalog of reflection nebulae
Sidney van den Bergh listed it in his catalog of reflection nebulae (1966), drawn from the Palomar Sky Survey. He chose nebulae lit by a star bright enough to appear in the Bonner and Cordoba star catalogs. The star that lights it is T Tauri, HD 284419, K0IIIE, magnitude 9.8. He rated it faint in brightness and red in color.
Finding Hind's Variable Nebula from Aldebaran
Hind's Variable Nebula lies 4.5° northwest of Aldebaran, the magnitude 0.9 star. Three fingers held at arm's length cover about 5°.
Hind's Variable Nebula is highest in the evening in January
The chart gives its height above the horizon at 9 pm through the year, from 60°N to 40°S. It can be seen from the whole northern hemisphere and south to about 70°S, and never sets north of 70°N.
Hind's Variable Nebula is 481 light-years away
The light seen from Hind's Variable Nebula tonight left it about 481 years ago, around 1545 AD. It ranks 2 of 159 by distance among the Sharpless nebulae with a measured distance. Distance source: T Tauri VLBA parallax 147.6 pc, Loinard et al. 2007.
