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Rare galaxy 37 EP

NGC 6816

RA 296.0093° · Dec -28.4008° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
37 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Toward the galactic centre +8
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 37

13 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6
  • Toward the galactic centre · +8
  • On the zodiac · +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.
  • Lenticular. A lenticular galaxy: it has a disc like a spiral but has run out of the gas needed to make new stars, leaving the arms behind.

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 12.9 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Sagittarius.
  • Southern sky. It rides the southern half of the sky — an easier target the further south you are.
  • 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
Sgr
dist ly
281366370.1723
dso type
G
hubble
E-S0
mag
12.87
name
NGC 6816
radial velocity kms
5978
redshift
0.0201
size arcmin
1.72
surface brightness
23.97

About NGC 6816

NGC 6816 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 281,366,370.2 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sgr and shines at apparent magnitude 12.87.

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 6816 in the constellation Sgr. At apparent magnitude 12.87, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6816 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 6816 is a rare galaxy

NGC 6816 scores 37 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms), Toward the galactic centre and On the zodiac — 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.