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Rare cluster 44 EP

NGC 5904

RA 229.6406° · Dec 2.0827° · openngc

Real photograph of NGC 5904 📷 Real photo
Chuck Ayoub (CC0)
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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
44 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Globular cluster +14
  • Messier object +12
  • Star cluster +7
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Big on the sky +5
Total score 44

6 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Messier object · +12
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Globular cluster · +14
  • Big on the sky · +5

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M5.

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

Sense of scale

  • Sense of scale. Stand on a planet near its core and the night sky would blaze with thousands of stars brighter than Venus. There would be no true darkness.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 6 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Serpens Caput.
  • 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.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Globulars glow yellow-orange because they are ancient — around 12 billion years old, with every hot blue star long since burned out.

How we came to know it

  • Messier's anti-list. Charles Messier was a comet hunter, and he compiled his famous catalogue in the 1770s and 80s purely as a list of fuzzy things that are NOT comets. History remembers the distractions and forgets the comets.

Properties

constellation
Se1
dso type
GCl
mag
5.95
messier
yes
messier number
005
name
NGC 5904
radial velocity kms
54
redshift
0.0002
size arcmin
15

Nearby objects

About NGC 5904

NGC 5904 is a rare cluster. It sits in the constellation Se1 and shines at apparent magnitude 5.95.

A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

How to see it

Look for NGC 5904 in the constellation Se1. At apparent magnitude 5.95, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 5904 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 5904 is a rare cluster

NGC 5904 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 — Star cluster, Messier object, Bright deep-sky object, Globular cluster and Big on the sky — 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.