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Uncommon galaxy 23 EP

IC 4791

RA 282.2549° · Dec 19.3311° · 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 14 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Hercules.
  • 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 July — 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. ≈ 3.9 trillion years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
Her
dist ly
223816380.3441
dso type
G
mag
14.01
name
IC 4791
radial velocity kms
4765
redshift
0.016
size arcmin
1.41
surface brightness
23.5

About IC 4791

IC 4791 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 223,816,380.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Her and shines at apparent magnitude 14.01.

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 4791 in the constellation Her. At apparent magnitude 14.01, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 4791 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 4791 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 4791 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.