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Rare galaxy 35 EP

NGC 1740

RA 75.4783° · Dec -3.2963° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
  • In Orion's hunting ground +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6
  • In Orion's hunting ground · +6
  • 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.
  • 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 14 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
190389893.5337
dso type
G
hubble
E-S0
mag
14.04
name
NGC 1740
radial velocity kms
4058
redshift
0.0136
size arcmin
1.79
surface brightness
23.87

About NGC 1740

NGC 1740 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 190,389,893.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Ori and shines at apparent magnitude 14.04.

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 1740 in the constellation Ori. At apparent magnitude 14.04, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 1740 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 1740 is a rare galaxy

NGC 1740 scores 35 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms), 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.