About NGC 5811
NGC 5811 is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation Vir and shines at apparent magnitude 14.8.
A barred spiral — a straight bar of stars driving right through the nucleus, feeding gas inwards. Our own Milky Way is one of these.
Rare galaxy 44 EP
NGC 5811
RA 225.1121° · Dec 1.6239° · openngc
Score breakdown
· 5 badgesRare 50 pts → Epic
- Galaxy +14
- Interacting galaxy pair +14
- Barred spiral galaxy +10
- On the zodiac +3
- Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 44
6 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
- Galaxy · +14
- Interacting galaxy pair · +14
- Barred spiral galaxy · +10
- On the zodiac · +3
- Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3
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.
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 14.8 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Virgo.
- Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
- Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around May — 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
- Vir
- dso type
- GPair
- hubble
- SBm
- mag
- 14.8
- name
- NGC 5811
- size arcmin
- 1.02
- surface brightness
- 23.38
How to see it
Look for NGC 5811 in the constellation Vir. At apparent magnitude 14.8, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.
Like any astronomical target, NGC 5811 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 5811 is a rare galaxy
NGC 5811 scores 44 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Interacting galaxy pair, Barred spiral galaxy, On the zodiac 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.