About Mice Galaxy
Mice Galaxy is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation Com.
Not one galaxy but two, locked in a gravitational embrace. Encounters like this shred spiral arms and trigger furious bursts of star formation.
Rare galaxy 36 EP
Mice Galaxy
RA 191.5446° · Dec 30.7272° · openngc
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesRare 50 pts → Epic
- Galaxy +14
- Interacting galaxy pair +14
- Has a proper name +8
Total score 36
14 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
- Galaxy · +14
- Has a proper name · +8
- Interacting galaxy pair · +14
Trivia
What it actually is
- What it actually is. Not one galaxy but two, locked in a gravitational embrace. Encounters like this shred spiral arms and trigger furious bursts of star formation.
Sense of scale
- Sense of scale. Galaxies pass through each other almost without collisions — the stars are so far apart that they simply miss.
- 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
- Where to look. You'll find it in the constellation 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 April — that's when to go looking.
What's in a name
- Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.
How we came to know it
- The New General Catalogue. Its NGC number comes from J. L. E. Dreyer's 1888 catalogue, itself built on decades of sky sweeps by William Herschel and his sister Caroline.
Properties
- constellation
- Com
- dso type
- GPair
- name
- Mice Galaxy
- named
- yes
- size arcmin
- 3
How to see it
Look for Mice Galaxy in the constellation Com.
Like any astronomical target, Mice Galaxy 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 Mice Galaxy is a rare galaxy
Mice Galaxy scores 36 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 14 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Has a proper name and Interacting galaxy pair — 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.