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Uncommon galaxy 29 EP

IC 2112

RA 75.1256° · Dec 4.3865° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • In Orion's hunting ground +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • In Orion's hunting ground · +6
  • 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 15.4 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Orion.
  • 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 December — 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. ≈ 8.8 trillion years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
Ori
dist ly
498645518.6621
dso type
G
mag
15.36
name
IC 2112
radial velocity kms
10511
redshift
0.0357
size arcmin
0.32
surface brightness
22.76

About IC 2112

IC 2112 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 498,645,518.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ori and shines at apparent magnitude 15.36.

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 2112 in the constellation Ori. At apparent magnitude 15.36, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 2112 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 2112 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 2112 scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, In Orion's hunting ground 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.