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Uncommon galaxy 26 EP

IC 322

RA 51.5020° · Dec 3.6806° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
26 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • On the zodiac +3
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 26

8 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A galaxy: a gravitationally bound city of stars, gas and dark matter, turning so slowly that a single rotation takes hundreds of millions of years.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Deep in the extragalactic distance — further than the entire Virgo Cluster of galaxies.
  • Scale. Home to hundreds of billions of stars — a universe unto itself, and every one of those points of light could have planets.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 15.3 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Taurus.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around November — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 7.5 trillion years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
Tau
dist ly
428803297.9968
dso type
G
mag
15.35
name
IC 322
radial velocity kms
9062
redshift
0.0307
size arcmin
0.76
surface brightness
23.77

About IC 322

IC 322 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 428,803,298 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Tau and shines at apparent magnitude 15.35.

A galaxy: a gravitationally bound city of stars, gas and dark matter, turning so slowly that a single rotation takes hundreds of millions of years.

How to see it

Look for IC 322 in the constellation Tau. At apparent magnitude 15.35, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 322 is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why IC 322 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 322 scores 26 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, On the zodiac and Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.