The Tadpole Nebula (IC 410) gets its name from two striking tadpole-shaped clouds of dark dust that appear to be swimming towards the center. These “tadpoles” are dense streams of gas and dust, each stretching about 10 lightyears. Within them, new stars may be forming, hidden inside their thick cocoons.
Partly obscured by foreground dust, the nebula itself surrounds NGC 1893, a young star cluster whose intense radiation and stellar winds shape the surrounding gas. The powerful energy from these newborn stars sculpts the nebula, carving out intricate shapes and pushing the tadpoles’ long tails away from the cluster’s heart.
IC 410 and NGC 1893 (109 min total exposure Mar 1, 2025)
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A few more Tadpole Nebula factoids
- The star cluster NGC 1893 was discovered in 1827, but the much fainter IC 410 nebula went unnoticed until it was revealed in photographs taken in 1892.
- The nebula spans approximately 100 light-years across and is composed of ionized hydrogen gas, glowing as it absorbs energy from nearby stars.
- It is also cataloged as Sh2-236 in the Sharpless catalog of emission nebulae.
- Located 12,000 light-years away in the constellation Auriga, IC 410 is part of our vast Milky Way galaxy.
- The NGC 1893 cluster is only about 4 million years old–—a mere blink of an eye in cosmic time, considering our Sun is over 4.5 billion years old.