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Uncommon galaxy 26 EP

NGC 5141

RA 201.2143° · Dec 36.3785° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
26 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
Total score 26

8 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6

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. 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 12.8 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, 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.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
CVn
dist ly
244308087.8873
dso type
G
hubble
S0
mag
12.8
name
NGC 5141
radial velocity kms
5198
redshift
0.0175
size arcmin
1.59
surface brightness
23.52

About NGC 5141

NGC 5141 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 244,308,087.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation CVn and shines at apparent magnitude 12.8.

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 NGC 5141 in the constellation CVn. At apparent magnitude 12.8, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 5141 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 5141 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 5141 scores 26 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 8 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely and Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) — 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.