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Epic cluster 66 EP

Omega Centauri

RA 201.6912° · Dec -47.4769° · openngc

Real photograph of Omega Centauri 📷 Real photo
Chuck Ayoub (CC0)
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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
66 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Omega Centauri, the greatest globular +26
  • Globular cluster +14
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Star cluster +7
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Big on the sky +5
Total score 66

12 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Globular cluster · +14
  • Big on the sky · +5
  • Omega Centauri, the greatest globular · +26

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

Sense of scale

  • Sense of scale. Stand on a planet near its core and the night sky would blaze with thousands of stars brighter than Venus. There would be no true darkness.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 5.3 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Globulars glow yellow-orange because they are ancient — around 12 billion years old, with every hot blue star long since burned out.

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
Cen
dso type
GCl
mag
5.33
name
Omega Centauri
named
yes
radial velocity kms
234
redshift
0.0008
size arcmin
27

Nearby objects

About Omega Centauri

Omega Centauri is an epic cluster. It sits in the constellation Cen and shines at apparent magnitude 5.33.

A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

How to see it

Look for Omega Centauri in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 5.33, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, Omega Centauri 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 Omega Centauri is an epic cluster

Omega Centauri scores 66 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 12 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Star cluster, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Globular cluster, Big on the sky and Omega Centauri, the greatest globular — 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.