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Uncommon galaxy 25 EP

IC 1409

RA 328.3317° · Dec -7.4999° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
25 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • On the zodiac +3
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 25

9 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • 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.
  • Spiral. A spiral galaxy. Those arms are not solid structures but traffic jams — density waves that stars drift into and out of as they orbit.

Sense of scale

  • 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.
  • 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 August — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Its colour is a census: blue where gas is still collapsing into hot young stars, yellow-red in the old, settled core.

How we came to know it

  • The Index Catalogue. The IC was the 1895 and 1908 supplement to the NGC — the first catalogue in history to be filled largely with objects found on photographic plates rather than by eye.

Properties

constellation
Aqr
dso type
G
hubble
Sab
mag
15.62
name
IC 1409
size arcmin
0.69
surface brightness
23.3

Nearby objects

About IC 1409

IC 1409 is an uncommon galaxy. It 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 1409 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 1409 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 1409 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 1409 scores 25 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Spiral galaxy, 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.