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Rare galaxy 42 EP

IC 1347

RA 315.4350° · Dec -13.3133° · 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 15.6 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Aquarius.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around August — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Aqr
dist ly
410113519.7468
dso type
G
hubble
S0
mag
15.62
name
IC 1347
radial velocity kms
8673
redshift
0.0294
size arcmin
1.42
surface brightness
24.77

About IC 1347

IC 1347 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 410,113,519.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Aqr and shines at apparent magnitude 15.62.

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 1347 in the constellation Aqr. At apparent magnitude 15.62, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 1347 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 1347 is a rare galaxy

IC 1347 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.