← Back to dex
Epic galaxy 51 EP

IC 1613

RA 16.1991° · Dec 2.1178° · openngc

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 5 badges
51 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Galaxy +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) +12
  • Ghostly low surface brightness +10
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Big on the sky +5
Total score 51

27 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) · +12
  • Big on the sky · +5
  • Ghostly low surface brightness · +10
  • Coming towards us · +10

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.
  • Irregular. An irregular galaxy — no disc, no bulge, no symmetry. Most have been pulled out of shape by a larger neighbour's gravity.

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 9.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Cetus.
  • 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 October — 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
Cet
dso type
G
hubble
I
mag
9.54
name
IC 1613
radial velocity kms
-233
size arcmin
18.32
surface brightness
25

Nearby objects

About IC 1613

IC 1613 is an epic galaxy. It sits in the constellation Cet and shines at apparent magnitude 9.54.

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 1613 in the constellation Cet. At apparent magnitude 9.54, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, IC 1613 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 1613 is an epic galaxy

IC 1613 scores 51 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 27 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Irregular galaxy (no shape at all), Big on the sky, Ghostly low surface brightness and Coming towards us — 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.