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Uncommon galaxy 31 EP

NGC 5421

RA 210.4245° · Dec 33.8238° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
31 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Interacting galaxy pair +14
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 31

3 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Interacting galaxy pair · +14
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. Not one galaxy but two, locked in a gravitational embrace. Encounters like this shred spiral arms and trigger furious bursts of star formation.

Sense of scale

  • Sense of scale. Galaxies pass through each other almost without collisions — the stars are so far apart that they simply miss.
  • 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 14.3 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.

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
CVn
dso type
GPair
mag
14.3
name
NGC 5421
size arcmin
1.3

About NGC 5421

NGC 5421 is an uncommon galaxy. It sits in the constellation CVn and shines at apparent magnitude 14.3.

Not one galaxy but two, locked in a gravitational embrace. Encounters like this shred spiral arms and trigger furious bursts of star formation.

How to see it

Look for NGC 5421 in the constellation CVn. At apparent magnitude 14.3, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 5421 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 5421 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 5421 scores 31 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 3 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Interacting galaxy pair and Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) — 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.