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Uncommon galaxy 29 EP

NGC 4208

RA 183.9140° · Dec 13.9015° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
29 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Spiral galaxy +5
Total score 29

5 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Coming towards us · +10

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

  • 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 11.1 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
Sc
mag
11.1
name
NGC 4208
radial velocity kms
-156
size arcmin
2.8
surface brightness
22.34

Nearby objects

About NGC 4208

NGC 4208 is an uncommon galaxy. It sits in the constellation Com and shines at apparent magnitude 11.1.

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 4208 in the constellation Com. At apparent magnitude 11.1, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 4208 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 4208 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 4208 scores 29 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Spiral galaxy and Coming towards us — 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.