Rare galaxy 34 EP

Spindle Galaxy

RA 151.3082° · Dec -7.7186° · openngc

Loading sky survey…

🌌 View in 3D star map

Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 4 badges

34 pts · Rare

Rare 50 pts → Epic

Galaxy +14
Has a proper name +8
Outside our galaxy entirely +6
Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6

Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

Galaxy · +14
Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
Has a proper name · +8
Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6

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.
Lenticular. A lenticular galaxy: it has a disc like a spiral but has run out of the gas needed to make new stars, leaving the arms behind.

Sense of scale

In perspective. Further than Andromeda, the most distant thing the unaided human eye can see.
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 9.1 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Sextans.
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 February — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation: Sex
dist ly: 31037882.8637
dso type: G
hubble: E-S0
mag: 9.09
name: Spindle Galaxy
named: yes
radial velocity kms: 665
redshift: 0.0022
size arcmin: 7.1
surface brightness: 23.02

Nearby objects

About Spindle Galaxy

Spindle Galaxy is a rare galaxy. It lies about 31,037,882.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sex and shines at apparent magnitude 9.09.

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 Spindle Galaxy in the constellation Sex. At apparent magnitude 9.09, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

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

Spindle Galaxy scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Has a proper name and Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) — 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.