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Rare galaxy 42 EP

IC 664

RA 165.1890° · Dec 10.5531° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
42 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Ghostly low surface brightness +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
  • On the zodiac +3
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 42

8 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Ghostly low surface brightness · +10
  • 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.
  • Lenticular. A lenticular galaxy: it has a disc like a spiral but has run out of the gas needed to make new stars, leaving the arms behind.

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 14.7 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Leo.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around March — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Leo
dist ly
472971518.3455
dso type
G
hubble
E-S0
mag
14.68
name
IC 664
radial velocity kms
9979
redshift
0.0339
size arcmin
1.87
surface brightness
24.67

About IC 664

IC 664 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 472,971,518.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Leo and shines at apparent magnitude 14.68.

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 664 in the constellation Leo. At apparent magnitude 14.68, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 664 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 664 is a rare galaxy

IC 664 scores 42 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms), On the zodiac, Ghostly low surface brightness 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.