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Uncommon cluster 32 EP

Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3

RA 39.9506° · Dec -34.2582° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Globular cluster +14
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Star cluster +7
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Globular cluster · +14
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

Sense of scale

  • Sense of scale. Stand on a planet near its core and the night sky would blaze with thousands of stars brighter than Venus. There would be no true darkness.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 13.6 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Fornax.
  • 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Globulars glow yellow-orange because they are ancient — around 12 billion years old, with every hot blue star long since burned out.

What's in a name

  • Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.

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
For
dso type
GCl
mag
13.59
name
Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3
named
yes
radial velocity kms
40
redshift
0.0001
size arcmin
1.2

Nearby objects

About Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3

Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3 is an uncommon cluster. It sits in the constellation For and shines at apparent magnitude 13.59.

A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

How to see it

Look for Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3 in the constellation For. At apparent magnitude 13.59, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3 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 Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3 is an uncommon cluster

Fornax Dwarf Cluster 3 scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star cluster, Has a proper name, Globular cluster 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.