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Rare galaxy 44 EP

NGC 6902B

RA 305.7794° · Dec -43.8686° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
44 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
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 44

6 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
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +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 13.8 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
138525060.4676
dso type
G
hubble
SABc
mag
13.8
name
NGC 6902B
radial velocity kms
2958
redshift
0.0099
size arcmin
1.32
surface brightness
23.52

About NGC 6902B

NGC 6902B is a rare galaxy. It lies about 138,525,060.5 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Sgr and shines at apparent magnitude 13.8.

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 6902B in the constellation Sgr. At apparent magnitude 13.8, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

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

NGC 6902B scores 44 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 6 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 6 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Barred spiral galaxy, Toward the galactic centre, On the zodiac 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.