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Rare galaxy 34 EP

NGC 5965

RA 233.5102° · Dec 56.6856° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
34 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
Total score 34

16 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

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

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. Deep in the extragalactic distance — further than the entire Virgo Cluster of galaxies.
  • 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 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
157424365.3796
dso type
G
hubble
SABb
mag
11.78
name
NGC 5965
radial velocity kms
3360
redshift
0.0113
size arcmin
5.08
surface brightness
23.75

About NGC 5965

NGC 5965 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 157,424,365.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Dra and shines at apparent magnitude 11.78.

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 5965 in the constellation Dra. At apparent magnitude 11.78, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 5965 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 5965 is a rare galaxy

NGC 5965 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 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Barred spiral galaxy and Never sets (northern circumpolar) — 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.