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Uncommon galaxy 29 EP

IC 2223

RA 121.4596° · Dec 37.4601° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +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.
  • Lenticular. A lenticular galaxy: it has a disc like a spiral but has run out of the gas needed to make new stars, leaving the arms behind.

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 16.3 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Lynx.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around January — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

constellation
Lyn
dist ly
477860473.7921
dso type
G
hubble
S0
mag
16.31
name
IC 2223
radial velocity kms
10081
redshift
0.0342
size arcmin
0.46
surface brightness
23.32

About IC 2223

IC 2223 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 477,860,473.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Lyn and shines at apparent magnitude 16.31.

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 2223 in the constellation Lyn. At apparent magnitude 16.31, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 2223 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 2223 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 2223 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, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) 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.