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Rare galaxy 37 EP

IC 512

RA 135.9576° · Dec 85.5017° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
37 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 37

13 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Barred spiral galaxy · +10
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Barred spiral. A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.

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 13.1 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Camelopardalis.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around February — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Cam
dist ly
75150229.4359
dso type
G
hubble
SABc
mag
13.11
name
IC 512
radial velocity kms
1610
redshift
0.0054
size arcmin
1.72
surface brightness
22.93

About IC 512

IC 512 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 75,150,229.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cam and shines at apparent magnitude 13.11.

A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.

How to see it

Look for IC 512 in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 13.11, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 512 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 512 is a rare galaxy

IC 512 scores 37 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Barred spiral galaxy, Never sets (northern circumpolar) 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.