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Uncommon galaxy 33 EP

NGC 4559B

RA 189.2247° · Dec 27.7491° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
33 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 33

1 more point to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Barred spiral galaxy · +10
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

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.

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 15.3 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
360665227.5157
dso type
G
hubble
SBab
mag
15.33
name
NGC 4559B
radial velocity kms
7641
redshift
0.0258
size arcmin
0.62
surface brightness
22.58

About NGC 4559B

NGC 4559B is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 360,665,227.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Com and shines at apparent magnitude 15.33.

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 4559B in the constellation Com. At apparent magnitude 15.33, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 4559B 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 4559B is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 4559B scores 33 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

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