NGC 1554, ''Struve's Lost Nebula'', is a list entry in the New General Catalogue of Nebulae compiled by John L. E. Dreyer. The nebula was discovered by the German-Russian astronomer

Otto Wilhelm von Struve Otto Wilhelm von Struve (May 7, 1819 (Julian calendar: April 25) – April 14, 1905) was a Russian astronomer of Baltic German origins. In Russian, his name is normally given as Otto Vasil'evich Struve (Отто Васильевич Струв ...

and confirmed by

Heinrich Louis d'Arrest Heinrich Louis d'Arrest (13 August 1822 – 14 June 1875; ) was a German astronomer, born in Berlin. His name is sometimes given as Heinrich Ludwig d'Arrest. Biography While still a student at the University of Berlin, d'Arrest was pa ...

.www.DavidDarling.info: Struve’s Lost Nebula (NGC 1554)
/ref> Location of NGC 1554 in Comparison to NGC 1555

Dreyer describes it as :''!!! var, S, R, Nn = *13'' which in NGC's encoding is expanded to :''a magnificent or otherwise interesting object, variable, small, round, nucleus north of a star of the 13th magnitude'' The identification is uncertain; many sources think it is related to

NGC 1555 NGC 1555, sometimes known as Hind's Variable Nebula, is a variable nebula, illuminated by the star T Tauri, located in the constellation Taurus. It is also in the second Sharpless catalog as 238. It is a Herbig–Haro object. The nebula was d ...

, ''Hind's Variable Nebula'', but at NGC 1554's coordinates, (epoch J2000) there is no nebula. However, there is a 14th magnitude star, 4' west-southwest of T Tauri, so there is a possibility that the nebula Struve discovered was surrounding a variable star and it only flares up every now and then (perhaps even on a centuries long cycle). Alternatively it may have been an error caused by a pair of faint stars.

In Fiction

In the 2014 video game Elite: Dangerous, Struve's Lost Nebula is featured as a small planetary nebula near the Pleiades cluster, and approximately 300 light years away from Earth. It has no star, so it physically can not be reached due to the mechanics of the game. This is likely due to an error in creating the astrometrics in the game, which is not uncommon for the game and has been a longstanding issue. There is also a Struve's Lost Sector within the game, but again, due to an error in the game's galactic map, the nebula itself is not within this sector.

References

1554 __NOTOC__ Year 1554 ( MDLIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events January–June * January 5 – A great fire breaks out in Eindhoven, Netherlands. *January 11 ...

Unidentified astronomical objects {{nebula-stub