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Rare galaxy 39 EP

NGC 4331

RA 185.6498° · Dec 76.1725° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) +12
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Irregular galaxy (no shape at all) · +12
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

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

  • 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 14.7 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Draco.
  • 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
Dra
dist ly
73152741.9249
dso type
G
hubble
I
mag
14.71
name
NGC 4331
radial velocity kms
1566
redshift
0.0052
size arcmin
1.58
surface brightness
23.22

About NGC 4331

NGC 4331 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 73,152,741.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra and shines at apparent magnitude 14.71.

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 4331 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 14.71, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 4331 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 4331 is a rare galaxy

NGC 4331 scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Irregular galaxy (no shape at all), Never sets (northern circumpolar) and Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) — 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.