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Rare galaxy 44 EP

Leo I

RA 152.1171° · Dec 12.3064° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 6 badges
44 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Galaxy +14
  • Ghostly low surface brightness +10
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Big on the sky +5
  • Elliptical galaxy +4
  • On the zodiac +3
Total score 44

6 more points to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Galaxy · +14
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Elliptical galaxy · +4
  • On the zodiac · +3
  • Big on the sky · +5
  • Ghostly low surface brightness · +10

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.
  • Elliptical. An elliptical galaxy: a smooth swarm of stars on randomly tilted orbits, with almost no cold gas left to build anything new.

Sense of scale

  • 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 10.4 you'll want a small backyard telescope, over in Leo.
  • 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 February — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Red and dead. Ellipticals glow reddish because every short-lived blue star they ever had has already died. Astronomers call them 'red and dead'.

What's in a name

  • Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.

Properties

constellation
Leo
dso type
G
hubble
E
mag
10.36
name
Leo I
named
yes
radial velocity kms
283
redshift
0.0009
size arcmin
11.75
surface brightness
25.35

Nearby objects

About Leo I

Leo I is a rare galaxy. It sits in the constellation Leo and shines at apparent magnitude 10.36.

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 Leo I in the constellation Leo. At apparent magnitude 10.36, a small backyard telescope will bring it into view.

Like any astronomical target, Leo I 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 Leo I is a rare galaxy

Leo I 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, Has a proper name, Elliptical galaxy, On the zodiac, Big on the sky and Ghostly low surface brightness — 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.