About NGC 5964
NGC 5964 is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation Se1 and shines at apparent magnitude 11.82.
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 34 EP
NGC 5964
RA 234.4009° · Dec 5.9740° · openngc
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesRare 50 pts → Epic
- Galaxy +14
- Barred spiral galaxy +10
- Ghostly low surface brightness +10
Total score 34
16 more points to reach Epic.
Badges
- Galaxy · +14
- Barred spiral galaxy · +10
- Ghostly low surface brightness · +10
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
- 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 11.8 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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. Its colour is a census: blue where gas is still collapsing into hot young stars, yellow-red in the old, settled core.
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
- Se1
- dso type
- G
- hubble
- SBcd
- mag
- 11.82
- name
- NGC 5964
- size arcmin
- 3.42
- surface brightness
- 24.77
How to see it
Look for NGC 5964 in the constellation Se1. At apparent magnitude 11.82, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.
Like any astronomical target, NGC 5964 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 5964 is a rare galaxy
NGC 5964 scores 34 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 16 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Barred 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.