NGC 1023 — E-S0 in Perseus
E-S0 in Perseus, 7.4 arcminutes across, its light 31 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 1023
NGC 1023 is a bright lenticular galaxy, a disc galaxy that has largely stopped forming stars and has no visible spiral arms. It has a small companion at the edge of its disc, and it has been studied closely to measure the mass of its central black hole.
What you are looking at
NGC 1023 is a lenticular galaxy: a disc galaxy that has largely used up the gas it needs to form new stars, so its disc is smooth and has no spiral arms. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 67,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 68% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 135, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 1039 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. It is cited in 695 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 17 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 31 million years. When it left, Antarctica had begun to freeze. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 645 km/s (1.4 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe. For a galaxy this close, its own motion through space is a large share of that speed, so the distance worked out from it is approximate; distances measured from individual stars in it can differ.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 1023 sits within the constellation Perseus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in December it stands about 89° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: NGC 1023A (3′ away on the sky, at least 20,000 light-years from it); UGC 2157 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 270,000 light-years from it); IC 239 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 420,000 light-years from it); UGC 2014 (1.5° away on the sky, at least 820,000 light-years from it), and 5 more.
By apparent size it is number 37 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 10123 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | E-S0 |
| Angular diameter | 7.40′ |
| Right ascension | 02h40m24.0s |
| Declination | +39°03′47.7″ |
| Constellation | Perseus |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 31 million years |
| Bar | yes, from the catalogue |
Check every figure above in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
What is sold
A print of this galaxy and the record of the calculation, once. When it sells it leaves the register and is not offered again. We assign no names and no ownership — nobody can sell you those.
At 7.4 arcminutes this is a Exceptional galaxy, which is the tier where a real photograph shows clear structure and dust lanes. The tier comes from the measured diameter, not from a price list.
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