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Uncommon galaxy 30 EP

NGC 6744

RA 287.4421° · Dec -63.8575° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Big on the sky +5
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Big on the sky · +5

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. 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 9.2 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
39111643.5726
dso type
G
hubble
Sbc
mag
9.25
name
NGC 6744
radial velocity kms
838
redshift
0.0028
size arcmin
15.67
surface brightness
23.47

About NGC 6744

NGC 6744 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 39,111,643.6 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Pav and shines at apparent magnitude 9.25.

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 6744 in the constellation Pav. At apparent magnitude 9.25, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6744 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 6744 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 6744 scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Spiral galaxy 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.