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Rare galaxy 38 EP

NGC 4393

RA 186.4635° · Dec 27.5616° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
38 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Ghostly low surface brightness +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 38

12 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Ghostly low surface brightness · +10
  • 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.
  • 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

  • In perspective. Further than Andromeda, the most distant thing the unaided human eye can see.
  • 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 13.7 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, 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.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

constellation
Com
dist ly
36625260.5169
dso type
G
hubble
Scd
mag
13.72
name
NGC 4393
radial velocity kms
785
redshift
0.0026
size arcmin
2.92
surface brightness
24.86

About NGC 4393

NGC 4393 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 36,625,260.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Com and shines at apparent magnitude 13.72.

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 4393 in the constellation Com. At apparent magnitude 13.72, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 4393 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 4393 is a rare galaxy

NGC 4393 scores 38 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Spiral galaxy, Ghostly low surface brightness 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.