NGC 2022

NGC 2022 is a planetary nebula in the equatorial constellation of Orion, located at a distance of from the Sun. It was first observed by William Herschel on December 28, 1785, who described it as: considerably bright, nearly round, like a star with a large diameter, like an ill-defined planetary nebula. In medium-sized amateur telescopes it looks like small grayish patch of light. It is not very bright but it is still easy to spot it in the eyepiece. The object has the shape of a prolate spheroid with a major to minor axis ratio of 1.2, an apparent size of , and a halo extending out to .
This is a double-shell planetary nebula with a wind-compressed inner shell and a more nebulous second shell. The linear radius of the inner shell is estimated at . It is expanding with a velocity of . The second shell is nearly circular and is expanding more slowly than the inner. The mass of the ionized elements in the planetary nebula is , or 19% of the Sun's mass. A faint outer halo consists of the remains of material ejected during the central star's asymptotic giant branch stage. 
NGC 2022 nebula lies 11° away from the Galactic Plane, which position suggests it was formed from a low-mass star. The elemental abundances are similar to those in the Sun, although carbon is about 50% higher and sulfur is a factor of two lower. The central star of this nebula has a visual magnitude of 15.92, a temperature of , and is radiating 852 times the luminosity of the Sun from a photosphere that has only 6.55% of the Sun's radius.