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Uncommon galaxy 27 EP

IC 1147

RA 237.5484° · Dec 69.5601° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
27 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 27

7 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • 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 15.5 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Draco.
  • 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 May — 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. ≈ 8.6 trillion years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
Dra
dist ly
488476491.3332
dso type
G
mag
15.52
name
IC 1147
radial velocity kms
10300
redshift
0.035
size arcmin
0.45
surface brightness
22.53

About IC 1147

IC 1147 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 488,476,491.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra and shines at apparent magnitude 15.52.

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 1147 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 15.52, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 1147 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 1147 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 1147 scores 27 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, 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.