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Uncommon galaxy 24 EP

NGC 6673

RA 281.2763° · Dec -62.2972° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 3 badges
24 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Elliptical galaxy +4
Total score 24

10 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Elliptical galaxy · +4

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.
  • Elliptical. An elliptical galaxy: a smooth swarm of stars on randomly tilted orbits, with almost no cold gas left to build anything new.

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 11.7 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Pavo.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around July — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

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

Properties

constellation
Pav
dist ly
52982308.5967
dso type
G
hubble
E
mag
11.72
name
NGC 6673
radial velocity kms
1135
redshift
0.0038
size arcmin
2.6
surface brightness
23.43

About NGC 6673

NGC 6673 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 52,982,308.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Pav and shines at apparent magnitude 11.72.

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 6673 in the constellation Pav. At apparent magnitude 11.72, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6673 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 6673 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 6673 scores 24 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 10 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 3 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely and Elliptical galaxy — 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.