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Uncommon galaxy 30 EP

NGC 3738

RA 173.9533° · Dec 54.5239° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) +12
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) · +12
  • 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.
  • Irregular. An irregular galaxy — no disc, no bulge, no symmetry. Most have been pulled out of shape by a larger neighbour's gravity.

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 11.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Ursa Major.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around March — 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
I
mag
11.45
name
NGC 3738
radial velocity kms
217
redshift
0.0007
size arcmin
2.26
surface brightness
21.77

Nearby objects

About NGC 3738

NGC 3738 is an uncommon galaxy. It sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 11.45.

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 3738 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 11.45, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 3738 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 3738 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 3738 scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) 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.