Anomaly galaxy 81 EP

Whirlpool Galaxy

RA 202.4696° · Dec 47.1952° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges

81 pts · Anomaly

Anomaly 120 pts → Mythic

The Whirlpool Galaxy +26
Galaxy +14
Messier object +12
Barred spiral galaxy +10
Has a proper name +8
Outside our galaxy entirely +6
Big on the sky +5

Total score 81

39 more points to reach Mythic.

Badges

Galaxy · +14
Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
Messier object · +12
Has a proper name · +8
Barred spiral galaxy · +10
Big on the sky · +5
The Whirlpool Galaxy · +26

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 M51.

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

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 8.4 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.

Properties

constellation: CVn
dist ly: 21651088.4062
dso type: G
hubble: SABb
mag: 8.36
messier: yes
messier number: 051
name: Whirlpool Galaxy
named: yes
radial velocity kms: 465
redshift: 0.0015
size arcmin: 13.71
surface brightness: 22.9

Nearby objects

About Whirlpool Galaxy

Whirlpool Galaxy is an anomaly galaxy. It lies about 21,651,088.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation CVn and shines at apparent magnitude 8.36.

A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.

How to see it

Look for Whirlpool Galaxy in the constellation CVn. At apparent magnitude 8.36, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, Whirlpool 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 Whirlpool Galaxy is an anomaly galaxy

Whirlpool Galaxy scores 81 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the anomaly tier. Another 39 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Messier object, Has a proper name, Barred spiral galaxy, Big on the sky and The Whirlpool 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.