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Uncommon galaxy 30 EP

NGC 428

RA 18.2321° · Dec 0.9816° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Barred spiral galaxy · +10

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

  • In perspective. Further than Andromeda, the most distant thing the unaided human eye can see.
  • 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 11.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Cetus.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around October — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Cet
dist ly
53750573.024
dso type
G
hubble
SABm
mag
11.47
name
NGC 428
radial velocity kms
1151
redshift
0.0038
size arcmin
2.82
surface brightness
22.67

About NGC 428

NGC 428 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 53,750,573 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cet and shines at apparent magnitude 11.47.

A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.

How to see it

Look for NGC 428 in the constellation Cet. At apparent magnitude 11.47, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 428 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 428 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 428 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, Outside our galaxy entirely and Barred spiral galaxy — 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.