← Back to dex
Rare galaxy 34 EP

Perseus A

RA 49.9507° · Dec 41.5117° · openngc

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6

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

  • 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 12.2 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 November — 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
245285878.9766
dso type
G
hubble
S0
mag
12.24
name
Perseus A
named
yes
radial velocity kms
5218
redshift
0.0176
size arcmin
2.16
surface brightness
23

About Perseus A

Perseus A is a rare galaxy. It lies about 245,285,879 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Per and shines at apparent magnitude 12.24.

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 Perseus A in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 12.24, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, Perseus A 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 Perseus A is a rare galaxy

Perseus A scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Has a proper name and Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) — 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.