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Rare galaxy 35 EP

NGC 5398

RA 210.3398° · Dec -33.0638° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
35 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Ghostly low surface brightness +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
Total score 35

15 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Ghostly low surface brightness · +10

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.
  • Spiral. A spiral galaxy. Those arms are not solid structures but traffic jams — density waves that stars drift into and out of as they orbit.

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 12.4 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, 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
56949346.7305
dso type
G
hubble
Sd
mag
12.39
name
NGC 5398
radial velocity kms
1220
redshift
0.0041
size arcmin
2.76
surface brightness
24.57

About NGC 5398

NGC 5398 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 56,949,346.7 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cen and shines at apparent magnitude 12.39.

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 5398 in the constellation Cen. At apparent magnitude 12.39, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 5398 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 5398 is a rare galaxy

NGC 5398 scores 35 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 15 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Spiral galaxy and Ghostly low surface brightness — 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.