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Uncommon galaxy 33 EP

NGC 2504

RA 119.9679° · Dec 5.6081° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
33 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 33

1 more point to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Barred spiral galaxy · +10
  • 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 14.2 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Canis Minor.
  • 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 January — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
CMi
dist ly
121092442.1895
dso type
G
hubble
SABc
mag
14.21
name
NGC 2504
radial velocity kms
2588
redshift
0.0087
size arcmin
0.62
surface brightness
21.88

About NGC 2504

NGC 2504 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 121,092,442.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation CMi and shines at apparent magnitude 14.21.

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 2504 in the constellation CMi. At apparent magnitude 14.21, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 2504 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 2504 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 2504 scores 33 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

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