IC 1266

IC 1266, also called Tc 1 or Thackeray 1, is a planetary nebula in the southern constellation Ara. It was discovered in 1894 by astronomer Williamina Fleming and sits about 12,400 light-years away, best viewed from the Southern Hemisphere. With an apparent visual magnitude of 11.2 and a diameter of roughly 0.2 arcminutes, it ranks among the smaller known planetary nebulae.

Its central star, HD 161044, is an O-type star with a P Cygni profile. Spectroscopic studies show low-excitation lines typical of young planetary nebulae. In 2010, the Spitzer Space Telescope detected the first fullerenes ever found in space—C60 and C70—within IC 1266, making these molecules the largest known in space.

Hydrogenated amorphous carbon grains are thought to produce infrared emission features in the nebula, possibly linked to fullerene formation. For amateur astronomers, guidestars HD 160715 and HD 160917 (both magnitude +7) lie immediately west-northwest of IC 1266, while the star Sigma Arae is about 2 degrees west-southwest. The nebula sits half a degree south of the boundary between Ara and Scorpius, as defined by Eugène Joseph Delporte.