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Uncommon galaxy 30 EP

NGC 3945

RA 178.3072° · Dec 60.6756° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6
  • 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.
  • 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. 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 10.8 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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 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
UMa
dist ly
58010948.4846
dso type
G
hubble
S0-a
mag
10.75
name
NGC 3945
radial velocity kms
1242
redshift
0.0042
size arcmin
5.55
surface brightness
24.12

About NGC 3945

NGC 3945 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 58,010,948.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMa and shines at apparent magnitude 10.75.

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 3945 in the constellation UMa. At apparent magnitude 10.75, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 3945 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 3945 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 3945 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 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) 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.