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Common galaxy 19 EP

IC 4386

RA 213.7599° · Dec -43.9613° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
19 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Galaxy +14
  • Spiral galaxy +5
Total score 19

3 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Spiral galaxy · +5

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

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

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Its colour is a census: blue where gas is still collapsing into hot young stars, yellow-red in the old, settled core.

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
Cen
dso type
G
hubble
Sd
mag
12.75
name
IC 4386
size arcmin
2.57
surface brightness
22.87

About IC 4386

IC 4386 is a common galaxy. It sits in the constellation Cen and shines at apparent magnitude 12.75.

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 4386 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 12.75, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 4386 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 4386 is a common galaxy

IC 4386 scores 19 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Galaxy and Spiral galaxy — 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.