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Uncommon galaxy 28 EP

NGC 1687

RA 72.8390° · Dec -33.9390° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
28 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 28

6 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • 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.
  • Spiral. A spiral galaxy. Those arms are not solid structures but traffic jams — density waves that stars drift into and out of as they orbit.

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 14.7 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Caelum.
  • 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 December — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

constellation
Cae
dist ly
255287284.9759
dso type
G
hubble
Sab
mag
14.73
name
NGC 1687
radial velocity kms
5429
redshift
0.0183
size arcmin
1.35
surface brightness
23.55

About NGC 1687

NGC 1687 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 255,287,285 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cae and shines at apparent magnitude 14.73.

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 1687 in the constellation Cae. At apparent magnitude 14.73, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 1687 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 1687 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 1687 scores 28 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Spiral galaxy 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.