NGC 1073 — SBc in Cetus
SBc in Cetus, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 58 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 1073
NGC 1073 is a barred spiral in Cetus similar in structure to the Milky Way. Hubble's image of it caught three distant quasars shining through its disc.
What you are looking at
NGC 1073 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. It is tilted about 52° 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 60,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about half 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. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1962L. It is cited in 336 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 21 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 1073 today set out about 58 million years ago, when an asteroid had ended the age of dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,208 km/s (2.7 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 1073 sits within the constellation Cetus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in December it stands about 51° 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: UGC 2162 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 840,000 light-years from it); NGC 1055 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 1,060,000 light-years from it); M77 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 1,430,000 light-years from it); UGC 2302 (1.6° away on the sky, at least 1,580,000 light-years from it), and 2 more.
By apparent size it is number 336 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 10329 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBc |
| Angular diameter | 3.54′ |
| Right ascension | 02h43m40.6s |
| Declination | +01°22′33.0″ |
| Constellation | Cetus |
| Inclination | 52.3° |
| Light travel time | 58 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 3.5 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.
Take this galaxy — $1,290 Browse the Collection