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Rare galaxy 40 EP

NGC 1569

RA 67.7044° · Dec 64.8479° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
40 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) +12
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Total score 40

10 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) · +12
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Coming towards us · +10

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

  • 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 11.1 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Camelopardalis.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around November — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Its colour is a census: blue where gas is still collapsing into hot young stars, yellow-red in the old, settled core.

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
Cam
dso type
G
hubble
IB
mag
11.11
name
NGC 1569
radial velocity kms
-89
size arcmin
3.91
surface brightness
22.96

Nearby objects

About NGC 1569

NGC 1569 is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation Cam and shines at apparent magnitude 11.11.

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 1569 in the constellation Cam. At apparent magnitude 11.11, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 1569 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 1569 is a rare galaxy

NGC 1569 scores 40 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Irregular galaxy (no shape at all), Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Coming towards us — 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.