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Uncommon galaxy 23 EP

NGC 970 NED02

RA 38.5487° · Dec 32.9773° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
23 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 23

11 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • 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.

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 15.7 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Triangulum.
  • 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.

Could we get there?

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

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 8 trillion years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
Tri
dist ly
456768123.1512
dso type
G
mag
15.66
name
NGC 970 NED02
radial velocity kms
9642
redshift
0.0327
size arcmin
0.72
surface brightness
23.88

About NGC 970 NED02

NGC 970 NED02 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 456,768,123.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Tri and shines at apparent magnitude 15.66.

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 970 NED02 in the constellation Tri. At apparent magnitude 15.66, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 970 NED02 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 970 NED02 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 970 NED02 scores 23 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely 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.