← Back to dex
Uncommon cluster 24 EP

IC 2148

RA 84.7994° · Dec -75.5624° · openngc

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

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 3 badges
24 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Globular cluster +14
  • Star cluster +7
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Globular cluster · +14
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

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 14.2 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
14.23
name
IC 2148
size arcmin
1.3

Nearby objects

About IC 2148

IC 2148 is an uncommon cluster. It sits in the constellation Men and shines at apparent magnitude 14.23.

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 2148 in the constellation Men. At apparent magnitude 14.23, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 2148 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 2148 is an uncommon cluster

IC 2148 scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Star cluster, Globular cluster 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.