Nebula NGC 6765 - "Fish Nebula"!

By: Vlad Fedosov
09/07/2026

Object info:

NGC 6765 (also cataloged as PK 62+9.1) is a faint planetary nebula located in the constellation Lyra, roughly 4,000 to 8,000 light-years from Earth. Discovery: Discovered by astronomer Albert Marth on June 28, 1864, its true nature as a planetary nebula was identified later by Rudolph Minkowski in 1946. Appearance & Structure: Unlike the famous Ring Nebula (M57) nearby, NGC 6765 exhibits a asymmetric, bipolar morphology with a linear central feature and faint polar outflows. It spans about 38 to 40 arcseconds in diameter. Observing Data: With an apparent magnitude of around 12.9 to 13.1, it is roughly 50 times fainter than M57, requiring mid-to-large aperture amateur telescopes to resolve visually. It is situated approximately $1.2^\circ$ northwest of the globular cluster M56.

Observation:

Was doing some EAA last night and found this new(to me) gem! Who knew that Lyra had another awesome(for big scopes) planetary nebula!

Planetary Nebula NGC 6765 that I dubbed the “Fish Nebula”!

This one is not from the faint of hear. I used my 16″ Meade RCX400 for the observation. Visually this really looked a lot more like a galaxy than a planetary nebula. In fact I checked my sky chart to make sure there was not a galaxy in the same FOV! Nop, I was just seeing the fish structure! Visually only the brighter central section is seen. This central section really reminds me of a fish shape! Even my wife agreed(we all know that astronomers are not always good at describing common shapes in astronomical objects;)! With EAA on this 43min stack(WAY longer than I normally do but I was captivated by this little PN!) I was able to capture the outer lobes as well. If you have a bigger scope or EAA I’d highly encourage you to give this guy a shot!