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Uncommon galaxy 28 EP

IC 5312

RA 350.2430° · Dec 19.3180° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
28 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 28

6 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • 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. 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 15 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Pegasus.
  • 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 September — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Peg
dist ly
515281935.6246
dso type
G
hubble
Sb
mag
14.96
name
IC 5312
radial velocity kms
10855
redshift
0.0369
size arcmin
0.35
surface brightness
21.39

About IC 5312

IC 5312 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 515,281,935.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Peg and shines at apparent magnitude 14.96.

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 5312 in the constellation Peg. At apparent magnitude 14.96, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, IC 5312 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 5312 is an uncommon galaxy

IC 5312 scores 28 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Spiral galaxy 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.