M77 (NGC 1068) — Sb in Cetus
Sb in Cetus, 6.1 arcminutes across, its light 55 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About M77 (NGC 1068)
Messier 77 is the brightest galaxy of its type, a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus shines intensely because a black hole is feeding at its centre, hidden behind a thick ring of dust. M77 was one of the galaxies in which this kind of active nucleus was first identified, and it has been studied ever since.
What you are looking at
M77 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. It is tilted about 35° to our line of sight, enough to show both the shape of its arms and the depth of its disc. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 97,000 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 a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole, though dust hides part of that glow from us. Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 37, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2018ivc. It is cited in 4,972 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 97 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from M77 today set out about 55 million years ago, when the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,141 km/s (2.6 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
M77 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: NGC 1055 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 490,000 light-years from it); UGC 2162 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 1,310,000 light-years from it); NGC 1073 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 1,350,000 light-years from it); UGC 2302 (2.7° away on the sky, at least 2,560,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 75 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 10266 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 6.11′ |
| Right ascension | 02h42m40.7s |
| Declination | -00°00′47.8″ |
| Constellation | Cetus |
| Inclination | 34.7° |
| Light travel time | 55 million years |
| Bar | not recorded |
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 6.1 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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