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Uncommon galaxy 32 EP

NGC 6252

RA 248.1690° · Dec 82.5768° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

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.
  • Spiral. A spiral galaxy. Those arms are not solid structures but traffic jams — density waves that stars drift into and out of as they orbit.

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 15.3 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Ursa Minor.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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
UMi
dist ly
302779995.0283
dso type
G
hubble
Sab
mag
15.27
name
NGC 6252
radial velocity kms
6428
redshift
0.0217
size arcmin
0.76
surface brightness
22.96

About NGC 6252

NGC 6252 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 302,779,995 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation UMi and shines at apparent magnitude 15.27.

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.

How to see it

Look for NGC 6252 in the constellation UMi. At apparent magnitude 15.27, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6252 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 6252 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 6252 scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

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