← Back to dex
Rare cluster 46 EP

NGC 6981

RA 313.3663° · Dec -12.5371° · openngc

Real photograph of NGC 6981 📷 Real photo
en:NASA, en:STScI, en:WikiSky
Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 5 badges
46 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Globular cluster +14
  • Messier object +12
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Star cluster +7
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 46

4 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Messier object · +12
  • Globular cluster · +14
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Coming towards us · +10

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M72.

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

Sense of scale

  • Sense of scale. Stand on a planet near its core and the night sky would blaze with thousands of stars brighter than Venus. There would be no true darkness.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 9 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Aquarius.
  • 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 August — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Globulars glow yellow-orange because they are ancient — around 12 billion years old, with every hot blue star long since burned out.

How we came to know it

  • Messier's anti-list. Charles Messier was a comet hunter, and he compiled his famous catalogue in the 1770s and 80s purely as a list of fuzzy things that are NOT comets. History remembers the distractions and forgets the comets.

Properties

constellation
Aqr
dso type
GCl
mag
8.96
messier
yes
messier number
072
name
NGC 6981
radial velocity kms
-331
size arcmin
4.5

Nearby objects

About NGC 6981

NGC 6981 is a rare cluster. It sits in the constellation Aqr and shines at apparent magnitude 8.96.

A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

How to see it

Look for NGC 6981 in the constellation Aqr. At apparent magnitude 8.96, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6981 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 6981 is a rare cluster

NGC 6981 scores 46 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star cluster, Messier object, Globular cluster, On the zodiac and Coming towards us — 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.