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Common galaxy 21 EP

NGC 2687A

RA 133.7709° · Dec 49.1565° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
21 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Galaxy +14
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 21

1 more point to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • 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.

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 17 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Ursa Major.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around February — 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
UMa
dso type
G
mag
17
name
NGC 2687A
size arcmin
0.23

About NGC 2687A

NGC 2687A is a common galaxy. It sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 17.

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 2687A in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 17, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 2687A 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 2687A is a common galaxy

NGC 2687A scores 21 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Never sets (northern circumpolar) 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.