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Uncommon galaxy 26 EP

NGC 4214

RA 183.9132° · Dec 36.3269° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
26 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) +12
Total score 26

8 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) · +12

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 9.8 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Canes Venatici.
  • 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
CVn
dso type
G
hubble
I
mag
9.77
name
NGC 4214
radial velocity kms
293
redshift
0.001
size arcmin
6.79
surface brightness
22.88

Nearby objects

About NGC 4214

NGC 4214 is an uncommon galaxy. It sits in the constellation CVn and shines at apparent magnitude 9.77.

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 4214 in the constellation CVn. At apparent magnitude 9.77, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 4214 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 4214 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 4214 scores 26 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Galaxy and Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) — 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.