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Rare galaxy 41 EP

NGC 6902

RA 306.1172° · Dec -43.6535° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
41 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Barred spiral galaxy +10
  • Toward the galactic centre +8
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 41

9 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Barred spiral galaxy · +10
  • Toward the galactic centre · +8
  • On the zodiac · +3

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 11.5 you'll want a small backyard telescope, 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
130786542.4179
dso type
G
hubble
SBab
mag
11.48
name
NGC 6902
radial velocity kms
2794
redshift
0.0094
size arcmin
2.69
surface brightness
22.7

About NGC 6902

NGC 6902 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 130,786,542.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sgr and shines at apparent magnitude 11.48.

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 6902 in the constellation Sgr. At apparent magnitude 11.48, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6902 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 6902 is a rare galaxy

NGC 6902 scores 41 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 9 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Barred spiral galaxy, 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.