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Uncommon galaxy 30 EP

NGC 404

RA 17.3626° · Dec 35.7181° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6
  • Coming towards us · +10

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.
  • Lenticular. A lenticular galaxy: it has a disc like a spiral but has run out of the gas needed to make new stars, leaving the arms behind.

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 10.6 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Andromeda.
  • 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 October — 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
And
dso type
G
hubble
E-S0
mag
10.55
name
NGC 404
radial velocity kms
-32
size arcmin
3.4
surface brightness
22.61

Nearby objects

About NGC 404

NGC 404 is an uncommon galaxy. It sits in the constellation And and shines at apparent magnitude 10.55.

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 NGC 404 in the constellation And. At apparent magnitude 10.55, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 404 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 404 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 404 scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) and Coming towards us — 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.