About NGC 4736
NGC 4736 is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation CVn and shines at apparent magnitude 8.24.
A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.
Rare galaxy 36 EP
NGC 4736
RA 192.7211° · Dec 41.1204° · openngc
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Score breakdown
· 3 badgesRare 50 pts → Epic
- Galaxy +14
- Messier object +12
- Barred spiral galaxy +10
Total score 36
14 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
- Galaxy · +14
- Messier object · +12
- Barred spiral galaxy · +10
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.
Hard to believe
- Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M94.
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
- 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 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Canes Venatici.
- 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.
Its true colour
- Its true colour. Its colour is a census: blue where gas is still collapsing into hot young stars, yellow-red in the old, settled core.
Properties
- constellation
- CVn
- dso type
- G
- hubble
- SABa
- mag
- 8.24
- messier
- yes
- messier number
- 094
- name
- NGC 4736
- radial velocity kms
- 287
- redshift
- 0.001
- size arcmin
- 7.74
- surface brightness
- 21.79
How to see it
Look for NGC 4736 in the constellation CVn. At apparent magnitude 8.24, it is an easy target for binoculars.
Like any astronomical target, NGC 4736 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 4736 is a rare galaxy
NGC 4736 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, Messier object and Barred spiral galaxy — 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.