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Uncommon galaxy 32 EP

NGC 6949

RA 308.7788° · Dec 64.8028° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
32 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Galaxy +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 32

2 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Never sets (northern circumpolar) · +4
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +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.
  • 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. 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 14.5 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Cepheus.
  • Never sets. So far north that from Britain, Canada or northern Europe it never dips below the horizon — it is up every clear night of the year.
  • 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
Cep
dist ly
128411906.9153
dso type
G
hubble
Sc
mag
14.5
name
NGC 6949
radial velocity kms
2743
redshift
0.0092
size arcmin
1.31
surface brightness
23.87

About NGC 6949

NGC 6949 is an uncommon galaxy. It lies about 128,411,906.9 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cep and shines at apparent magnitude 14.5.

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 6949 in the constellation Cep. At apparent magnitude 14.5, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6949 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 6949 is an uncommon galaxy

NGC 6949 scores 32 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Spiral galaxy, Never sets (northern circumpolar) 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.