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Rare galaxy 39 EP

NGC 5907

RA 228.9740° · Dec 56.3288° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Big on the sky +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Barred spiral galaxy · +10
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Big on the sky · +5

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. 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 10.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Draco.
  • 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 May — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

constellation
Dra
dist ly
31079788.1961
dso type
G
hubble
SABc
mag
10.37
name
NGC 5907
radial velocity kms
666
redshift
0.0022
size arcmin
11.3
surface brightness
23.6

About NGC 5907

NGC 5907 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 31,079,788.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra and shines at apparent magnitude 10.37.

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 NGC 5907 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 10.37, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 5907 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 5907 is a rare galaxy

NGC 5907 scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Barred spiral galaxy, Never sets (northern circumpolar) 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.