Rare galaxy 45 EP

Centaurus A

RA 201.3651° · Dec -43.0191° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges

45 pts · Rare

Rare 50 pts → Epic

Galaxy +14
Has a proper name +8
Outside our galaxy entirely +6
Bright deep-sky object +6
Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
Big on the sky +5

Total score 45

5 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

Galaxy · +14
Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
Bright deep-sky object · +6
Has a proper name · +8
Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6
Big on the sky · +5

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 7.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Centaurus.
Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around April — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation: Cen
dist ly: 25506378.987
dso type: G
hubble: S0
mag: 7.22
name: Centaurus A
named: yes
radial velocity kms: 547
redshift: 0.0018
size arcmin: 25.88
surface brightness: 23.59

Nearby objects

About Centaurus A

Centaurus A is a rare galaxy. It lies about 25,506,379 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen and shines at apparent magnitude 7.22.

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 Centaurus A in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 7.22, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, Centaurus A 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 Centaurus A is a rare galaxy

Centaurus A scores 45 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 5 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) and Big on the sky — 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.