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Uncommon galaxy 26 EP

IC 855

RA 197.6537° · Dec -4.4845° · 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 14.8 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Virgo.
  • 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 April — 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. ≈ 6.4 trillion years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
Vir
dist ly
361782703.0464
dso type
G
mag
14.84
name
IC 855
radial velocity kms
7664
redshift
0.0259
size arcmin
0.72
surface brightness
22.88

About IC 855

IC 855 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 361,782,703 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vir and shines at apparent magnitude 14.84.

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 855 in the constellation Vir. At apparent magnitude 14.84, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 855 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 855 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 855 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.