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Uncommon galaxy 23 EP

IC 4285

RA 202.9398° · Dec 46.8216° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
23 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 23

11 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +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.

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 17.9 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Canes Venatici.
  • 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 April — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 18.2 trillion years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
CVn
dist ly
1036318870.232
dso type
G
mag
17.88
name
IC 4285
radial velocity kms
21419
redshift
0.0742
size arcmin
0.32
surface brightness
24.1

About IC 4285

IC 4285 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 1.04×10^9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation CVn and shines at apparent magnitude 17.88.

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 4285 in the constellation CVn. At apparent magnitude 17.88, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 4285 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 4285 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 4285 scores 23 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely 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.