← Back to dex
Rare galaxy 41 EP

IC 3576

RA 189.1570° · Dec 6.6209° · openngc

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

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 6 badges
41 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Ghostly low surface brightness +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • On the zodiac +3
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 41

9 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Ghostly low surface brightness · +10
  • 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.
  • Spiral. A spiral galaxy. Those arms are not solid structures but traffic jams — density waves that stars drift into and out of as they orbit.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Further than Andromeda, the most distant thing the unaided human eye can see.
  • 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 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Virgo.
  • 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 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
Vir
dist ly
46794287.8458
dso type
G
hubble
Sm
mag
14.97
name
IC 3576
radial velocity kms
1003
redshift
0.0034
size arcmin
2.3
surface brightness
24.86

About IC 3576

IC 3576 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 46,794,287.8 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vir and shines at apparent magnitude 14.97.

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 3576 in the constellation Vir. At apparent magnitude 14.97, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 3576 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 3576 is a rare galaxy

IC 3576 scores 41 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Spiral galaxy, On the zodiac, Ghostly low surface brightness 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.