NGC 1055 — SBb in Cetus
SBb in Cetus, 6.9 arcminutes across, its light 48 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 1055
What you are looking at
NGC 1055 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 63° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 96,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), close to the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an emission-line galaxy: its spectrum shows the glow of gas lit by young stars. It is cited in 300 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 34 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 1055 is light that left it about 48 million years ago; on Earth, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 993 km/s (2.2 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
NGC 1055 lies in Cetus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in December it stands about 50° 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: M77 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 430,000 light-years from it); UGC 2162 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 710,000 light-years from it); NGC 1073 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 870,000 light-years from it); UGC 2302 (2.5° away on the sky, at least 2,080,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 48 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 10208 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBb |
| Angular diameter | 6.92′ |
| Right ascension | 02h41m45.2s |
| Declination | +00°26′36.3″ |
| Constellation | Cetus |
| Inclination | 62.7° |
| Light travel time | 48 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 6.9 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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