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IC 4699 is a faint planetary nebula in the constellation of Telescopium, southwestward from the arc of the Southern Crown, Corona Australis. As seen from Earth, it falls close to halfway between the two stars Alpha and Epsilon Telescopii in the northwest of the constellation. In reality, its distance of more than 20,000 light years places it far, far beyond either of these stars.
At 13th magnitude, details of this nebula are difficult to discern, though it evidently has a somewhat elliptical form. In the sky, the nebula measures some sixteen arcseconds along its longest axis (a little over one two hundredth of a degree). From this we can calculate that the nebula is actually somewhere between one and two light years in diameter. In common with other planetary nebulae, IC 4699 represents the outer shell cast off by a giant star in the last stages of its life, creating a wave of material expanding out into space from the star's surviving core at its heart.
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