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Rare galaxy 42 EP

NGC 4321

RA 185.7285° · Dec 15.8218° · openngc

Real photograph of NGC 4321 📷 Real photo
ESO (CC BY 4.0)
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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
42 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Messier object +12
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
Total score 42

8 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Messier object · +12
  • Barred spiral galaxy · +10

Trivia

What makes it special

  • Barred spiral. A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.

Hard to believe

  • Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M100.

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.

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 9.5 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.

Properties

constellation
Com
dist ly
73348300.1427
dso type
G
hubble
SABb
mag
9.47
messier
yes
messier number
100
name
NGC 4321
radial velocity kms
1570
redshift
0.0053
size arcmin
6.1
surface brightness
22.61

About NGC 4321

NGC 4321 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 73,348,300.1 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Com and shines at apparent magnitude 9.47.

A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.

How to see it

Look for NGC 4321 in the constellation Com. At apparent magnitude 9.47, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 4321 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 4321 is a rare galaxy

NGC 4321 scores 42 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Messier object and Barred spiral galaxy — 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.