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Rare galaxy 37 EP

IC 5049B

RA 311.8493° · Dec -38.4183° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
37 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Ghostly low surface brightness +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Elliptical galaxy +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 37

13 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Elliptical galaxy · +4
  • 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.
  • Elliptical. An elliptical galaxy: a smooth swarm of stars on randomly tilted orbits, with almost no cold gas left to build anything new.

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

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Mic
dist ly
572985578.3383
dso type
G
hubble
E
mag
13.6
name
IC 5049B
radial velocity kms
12044
redshift
0.041
size arcmin
1.78
surface brightness
24.52

About IC 5049B

IC 5049B is a rare galaxy. It lies about 572,985,578.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Mic and shines at apparent magnitude 13.6.

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 5049B in the constellation Mic. At apparent magnitude 13.6, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 5049B 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 5049B is a rare galaxy

IC 5049B scores 37 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Elliptical galaxy, 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.