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Rare galaxy 39 EP

NGC 7681

RA 352.2287° · Dec 17.3096° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
39 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Ghostly low surface brightness +10
  • Outside our galaxy entirely +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) +6
  • Faint fuzzy (mag > 13) +3
Total score 39

11 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Outside our galaxy entirely · +6
  • Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms) · +6
  • Ghostly low surface brightness · +10
  • 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.
  • Lenticular. A lenticular galaxy: it has a disc like a spiral but has run out of the gas needed to make new stars, leaving the arms behind.

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 14.7 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 September — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Properties

constellation
Peg
dist ly
320422139.9684
dso type
G
hubble
S0
mag
14.68
name
NGC 7681
radial velocity kms
6798
redshift
0.0229
size arcmin
1.44
surface brightness
25.07

About NGC 7681

NGC 7681 is a rare galaxy. It lies about 320,422,140 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Peg and shines at apparent magnitude 14.68.

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 7681 in the constellation Peg. At apparent magnitude 14.68, it takes a larger telescope or a long-exposure image to capture.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 7681 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 7681 is a rare galaxy

NGC 7681 scores 39 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 11 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Galaxy, Outside our galaxy entirely, Lenticular galaxy (a disc with no arms), Ghostly low surface brightness 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.