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Common galaxy 20 EP

NGC 4150

RA 182.6402° · Dec 30.4015° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
20 pts · Common
Common 22 pts → Uncommon
  • Galaxy +14
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
Total score 20

2 more points to reach Uncommon.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • 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

  • 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 11.7 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Coma Berenices.
  • 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
Com
dso type
G
hubble
S0
mag
11.69
name
NGC 4150
radial velocity kms
234
redshift
0.0008
size arcmin
1.99
surface brightness
22.7

About NGC 4150

NGC 4150 is a common galaxy. It sits in the constellation Com and shines at apparent magnitude 11.69.

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 4150 in the constellation Com. At apparent magnitude 11.69, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 4150 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 4150 is a common galaxy

NGC 4150 scores 20 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the common tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Galaxy 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.