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Uncommon galaxy 32 EP

NGC 3523

RA 165.7763° · Dec 75.1157° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • 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.
  • 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

  • In perspective. Deep in the extragalactic distance — further than the entire Virgo Cluster of galaxies.
  • 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 13.7 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Draco.
  • 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 March — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Dra
dist ly
331373400.1687
dso type
G
hubble
Sbc
mag
13.74
name
NGC 3523
radial velocity kms
7028
redshift
0.0237
size arcmin
1.14
surface brightness
22.79

About NGC 3523

NGC 3523 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 331,373,400.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra and shines at apparent magnitude 13.74.

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 3523 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 13.74, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 3523 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 3523 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 3523 scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Spiral 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.