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Rare galaxy 36 EP

NGC 247C

RA 11.9071° · Dec -20.4528° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
36 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Interacting galaxy pair +14
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 36

14 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Interacting galaxy pair · +14
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. Not one galaxy but two, locked in a gravitational embrace. Encounters like this shred spiral arms and trigger furious bursts of star formation.
  • 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

  • Sense of scale. Galaxies pass through each other almost without collisions — the stars are so far apart that they simply miss.
  • 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 16.4 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Cetus.
  • 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 October — that's when to go looking.

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
Cet
dso type
GPair
hubble
Sb
mag
16.39
name
NGC 247C
size arcmin
0.55
surface brightness
24.25

About NGC 247C

NGC 247C is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation Cet and shines at apparent magnitude 16.39.

Not one galaxy but two, locked in a gravitational embrace. Encounters like this shred spiral arms and trigger furious bursts of star formation.

How to see it

Look for NGC 247C in the constellation Cet. At apparent magnitude 16.39, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 247C 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 247C is a rare galaxy

NGC 247C scores 36 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 14 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Interacting galaxy pair, 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.