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Common cluster 21 EP

IC 2146

RA 84.4455° · Dec -74.7832° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Globular cluster +14
  • Star cluster +7
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Globular cluster · +14

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

Sense of scale

  • Sense of scale. Stand on a planet near its core and the night sky would blaze with thousands of stars brighter than Venus. There would be no true darkness.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 12.4 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Mensa.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around December — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Globulars glow yellow-orange because they are ancient — around 12 billion years old, with every hot blue star long since burned out.

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
Men
dso type
GCl
mag
12.41
name
IC 2146
radial velocity kms
226
redshift
0.0008
size arcmin
3.3

Nearby objects

About IC 2146

IC 2146 is a common cluster. It sits in the constellation Men and shines at apparent magnitude 12.41.

A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

How to see it

Look for IC 2146 in the constellation Men. At apparent magnitude 12.41, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 2146 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 2146 is a common cluster

IC 2146 scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star cluster and Globular cluster — 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.