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Rare galaxy 39 EP

NGC 1717

RA 74.6311° · Dec -0.5747° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • In Orion's hunting ground +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Barred spiral galaxy · +10
  • In Orion's hunting ground · +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Barred spiral. A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.

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.

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 15.6 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Orion.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • 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
Ori
dist ly
195432501.8657
dso type
G
hubble
SBa
mag
15.62
name
NGC 1717
radial velocity kms
4165
redshift
0.014
size arcmin
0.95
surface brightness
24.04

About NGC 1717

NGC 1717 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 195,432,501.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ori and shines at apparent magnitude 15.62.

A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.

How to see it

Look for NGC 1717 in the constellation Ori. At apparent magnitude 15.62, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 1717 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 1717 is a rare galaxy

NGC 1717 scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Barred spiral galaxy, In Orion's hunting ground 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.