Van den Bergh Catalog of Reflection Nebulae

All 158 Van den Bergh nebulae with the stars that light them

In catalog order, which runs by right ascension. Sort any column, or type a name, star or constellation; the brightness buttons above the map also filter the table. 18 of the nebulae have their own page elsewhere on Go Astronomy; those link to that page. Distances are to the star that lights each nebula.

A reflection nebula is dust lit by a nearby star

Dust grains scatter blue light more than red, the same reason the daytime sky is blue, so most reflection nebulae look blue in photographs. A star hot enough to ionize hydrogen, hotter than about spectral type B1, turns the gas around it into a red emission nebula; cooler stars only light the dust. 112 of the 158 nebulae here are rated blue to some degree and 21 red, the red ones lit by cool, red giant stars.

47 Van den Bergh nebulae are rated bright or very bright

Van den Bergh rated each nebula's brightness and color by eye on the red and blue Palomar Sky Survey prints. The brighter ones, with a common name:

• vdB 17 Embryo Nebula, in Perseus, lit by BD+30 549
• vdB 19, in Perseus, lit by HD 281159
• vdB 21 Maia Nebula, in Taurus, lit by Maia (20 Tau)
• vdB 22 Merope Nebula, in Taurus, lit by Merope (23 Tau)
• vdB 33, in Orion, lit by HD 293815
• vdB 34 Flaming Star Nebula, in Auriga, lit by AE Aurigae
• vdB 46, in Orion, lit by BD-06 1253
• vdB 52 Lump Star, in Orion, lit by HD 37903
• vdB 59, in Orion, lit by HD 38563
• vdB 67 Angel Nebula, in Monoceros, lit by BD-06 1415
• vdB 73, in Monoceros, lit by BD-06 1440
• vdB 93 Seagull Nebula (Mon), in Monoceros, lit by HD 53367
• vdB 94, in Canis Major, lit by HD 53623
• vdB 106 Rho Ophiuchi Nebula, in Ophiuchus, lit by Rho Oph
• vdB 139 Iris Nebula, in Cepheus, lit by HD 200775
• vdB 146 Cosmic Rosebud, in Cepheus, lit by BD+65 1637
• vdB 152 Wolf's Cave Nebula, in Cepheus, lit by BD+69 1231

Reflection nebulae are faint visually because they shine only by borrowed light. The best are around bright stars: the Pleiades, the Witch Head beside Rigel, and the Iris Nebula in Cepheus. Imaging brings out the blue that the eye cannot see.

The catalog covers the sky north of declination -33°

The most lie in Orion (25), Monoceros (20), Cepheus (14), Cygnus (13), Taurus (12), Cassiopeia (9). Reflection nebulae cluster around the young star groups of Orion, Taurus, Perseus and Ophiuchus, where the stars are still near the dusty clouds they formed in. Van den Bergh and Gretchen Herbst extended the list to the southern sky in 1975 as the vdBH catalog.

The nearest Van den Bergh nebula is vdB 7, 213 light-years away

Each dot is one nebula at the distance of its star, on a scale where each step is ten times farther. The farthest is vdB 6, 11,100 light-years away.

Sidney van den Bergh listed 158 reflection nebulae in 1966

Van den Bergh, then at the David Dunlap Observatory in Toronto, searched the Palomar Sky Survey for nebulae lit by stars bright enough to appear in the Bonner and Cordoba star catalogs, so that the star could be named and its spectrum known. "A Study of Reflection Nebulae" appeared in the Astronomical Journal in 1966. Designations are written vdB 1 to vdB 158.