Rare galaxy 48 EP

Cigar Galaxy

RA 148.9697° · Dec 69.6794° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges

48 pts · Rare

Rare 50 pts → Epic

Galaxy +14
Messier object +12
Has a proper name +8
Spiral galaxy +5
Big on the sky +5
Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4

Total score 48

2 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

Galaxy · +14
Messier object · +12
Has a proper name · +8
Spiral galaxy · +5
Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
Big on the sky · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M82.

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 8.3 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: S?
mag: 8.3
messier: yes
messier number: 082
name: Cigar Galaxy
named: yes
radial velocity kms: 219
redshift: 0.0007
size arcmin: 10.99
surface brightness: 22.22

Nearby objects

About Cigar Galaxy

Cigar Galaxy is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 8.3.

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 Cigar Galaxy in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 8.3, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, Cigar 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 Cigar Galaxy is a rare galaxy

Cigar Galaxy scores 48 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Galaxy, Messier object, Has a proper name, Spiral galaxy, Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Big on the sky — 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.