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Epic galaxy 64 EP

Bode's Galaxy

RA 148.8882° · Dec 69.0653° · openngc

Real photograph of Bode's Galaxy 📷 Real photo
NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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Score breakdown

· 8 badges
64 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Galaxy +14
  • Messier object +12
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Big on the sky +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Total score 64

14 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Messier object · +12
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Big on the sky · +5
  • Coming towards us · +10

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M81.

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 6.9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, 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.

Properties

constellation
UMa
dso type
G
hubble
Sab
mag
6.92
messier
yes
messier number
081
name
Bode's Galaxy
named
yes
radial velocity kms
-42
size arcmin
21.63
surface brightness
22.78

Nearby objects

About Bode's Galaxy

Bode's Galaxy is an epic galaxy. It sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 6.92.

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 Bode's Galaxy in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 6.92, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, Bode's Galaxy 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 Bode's Galaxy is an epic galaxy

Bode's Galaxy scores 64 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 14 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 8 science badges — Galaxy, Messier object, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Spiral galaxy, Never sets (northern circumpolar), Big on the sky and Coming towards us — 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.