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Rare galaxy 37 EP

Eyes

RA 186.9187° · Dec 13.0789° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
37 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 37

13 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6
  • On the zodiac · +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.
  • Lenticular. A lenticular galaxy: it has a disc like a spiral but has run out of the gas needed to make new stars, leaving the arms behind.

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 11 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Virgo.
  • 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
Vir
dist ly
39111643.5726
dso type
G
hubble
S0
mag
10.96
name
Eyes
named
yes
radial velocity kms
839
redshift
0.0028
size arcmin
3.03
surface brightness
22.66

About Eyes

Eyes is a rare galaxy. It lies about 39,111,643.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Vir and shines at apparent magnitude 10.96.

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 Eyes in the constellation Vir. At apparent magnitude 10.96, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, Eyes 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 Eyes is a rare galaxy

Eyes scores 37 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Has a proper name, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) and On the zodiac — 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.