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Rare galaxy 36 EP

NGC 7066

RA 321.5583° · Dec 14.1819° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
36 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Interacting galaxy pair +14
  • Spiral galaxy +5
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 36

14 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Interacting galaxy pair · +14
  • Spiral galaxy · +5
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) · +3

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. Not one galaxy but two, locked in a gravitational embrace. Encounters like this shred spiral arms and trigger furious bursts of star formation.
  • 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

  • Sense of scale. Galaxies pass through each other almost without collisions — the stars are so far apart that they simply miss.
  • 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 15.2 it is far too faint for the eye: this one belongs to cameras and long exposures, over in Pegasus.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around August — that's when to go looking.

How we came to know it

  • The New General Catalogue. Its NGC number comes from J. L. E. Dreyer's 1888 catalogue, itself built on decades of sky sweeps by William Herschel and his sister Caroline.

Properties

constellation
Peg
dso type
GPair
hubble
Sa
mag
15.2
name
NGC 7066
size arcmin
0.83
surface brightness
23.47

About NGC 7066

NGC 7066 is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation Peg and shines at apparent magnitude 15.2.

Not one galaxy but two, locked in a gravitational embrace. Encounters like this shred spiral arms and trigger furious bursts of star formation.

How to see it

Look for NGC 7066 in the constellation Peg. At apparent magnitude 15.2, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 7066 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 7066 is a rare galaxy

NGC 7066 scores 36 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 14 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Galaxy, Interacting galaxy pair, Spiral galaxy 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.