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Uncommon galaxy 23 EP

NGC 2976

RA 146.8144° · Dec 67.9164° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
23 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Total score 23

11 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4

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

  • 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 10.2 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Ursa Major.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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
hubble
Sc
mag
10.16
name
NGC 2976
radial velocity kms
12
redshift
0
size arcmin
5.77
surface brightness
22.81

About NGC 2976

NGC 2976 is an uncommon galaxy. It sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 10.16.

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 2976 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 10.16, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 2976 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 2976 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 2976 scores 23 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

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