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Uncommon galaxy 32 EP

NGC 1473

RA 56.8596° · Dec -68.2206° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) +12
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) · +12

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. 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 12.9 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Hydrus.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • 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
Hyi
dist ly
65078981.2159
dso type
G
hubble
IB
mag
12.91
name
NGC 1473
radial velocity kms
1394
redshift
0.0047
size arcmin
1.53
surface brightness
22.54

About NGC 1473

NGC 1473 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 65,078,981.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Hyi and shines at apparent magnitude 12.91.

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 1473 in the constellation Hyi. At apparent magnitude 12.91, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 1473 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 1473 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 1473 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 3 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely and Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) — 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.