About NGC 55
NGC 55 is an uncommon galaxy. It sits in the constellation Scl and shines at apparent magnitude 8.54.
A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.
Uncommon galaxy 29 EP
NGC 55
RA 3.7233° · Dec -39.1966° · openngc
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesUncommon 34 pts → Rare
- Galaxy +14
- Barred spiral galaxy +10
- Big on the sky +5
Total score 29
5 more points to reach Rare.
Badges
- Galaxy · +14
- Barred spiral galaxy · +10
- Big on the sky · +5
Trivia
What makes it special
- Barred spiral. A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.
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
- 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 8.5 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Sculptor.
- 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 September — 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 New General Catalogue. Its NGC number comes from J. L. E. Dreyer's 1888 catalogue, itself built on decades of sky sweeps by William Herschel and his sister Caroline.
Properties
- constellation
- Scl
- dso type
- G
- hubble
- SBm
- mag
- 8.54
- name
- NGC 55
- radial velocity kms
- 129
- redshift
- 0.0004
- size arcmin
- 29.85
- surface brightness
- 22.52
How to see it
Look for NGC 55 in the constellation Scl. At apparent magnitude 8.54, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, NGC 55 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 NGC 55 is an uncommon galaxy
NGC 55 scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Barred spiral galaxy and Big on the sky — 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.