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Uncommon galaxy 29 EP

IC 3227

RA 185.6486° · Dec 24.0851° · 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 16.5 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Coma Berenices.
  • 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 March — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Com
dist ly
61321469.7442
dso type
G
hubble
S0
mag
16.52
name
IC 3227
radial velocity kms
1313
redshift
0.0044
size arcmin
0.46
surface brightness
23.55

About IC 3227

IC 3227 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 61,321,469.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Com and shines at apparent magnitude 16.52.

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 3227 in the constellation Com. At apparent magnitude 16.52, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 3227 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 3227 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 3227 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.