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Rare galaxy 35 EP

NGC 1023A

RA 40.1571° · Dec 39.0575° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) +12
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) · +12
  • 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.
  • Irregular. An irregular galaxy — no disc, no bulge, no symmetry. Most have been pulled out of shape by a larger neighbour's gravity.

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

Properties

constellation
Per
dist ly
34655709.8941
dso type
G
hubble
IB
mag
13.8
name
NGC 1023A
radial velocity kms
743
redshift
0.0025
size arcmin
1.3
surface brightness
23.17

About NGC 1023A

NGC 1023A is a rare galaxy. It lies about 34,655,709.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Per and shines at apparent magnitude 13.8.

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 1023A in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 13.8, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 1023A 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 1023A is a rare galaxy

NGC 1023A scores 35 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) 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.