IC 284 — Sd in Perseus
Sd in Perseus, 4.3 arcminutes across, its light 130 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About IC 284
What you are looking at
IC 284 is a loose spiral with almost no central bulge; its arms are patchy and ragged, and rich in gas. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 72° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 162,000 light-years, about 1.7 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a group of galaxies. Astronomers' catalogues record it under 16 different designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from IC 284 today set out about 130 million years ago, when the first birds had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,723 km/s (6.1 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, IC 284 sits within the constellation Perseus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in December it stands about 88° high in the north, close to overhead, 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 1186 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 1,080,000 light-years from it); UGC 2554 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 2,350,000 light-years from it); NGC 1171 (1.1° away on the sky, at least 2,490,000 light-years from it); IC 292 (1.8° away on the sky, at least 4,020,000 light-years from it), and 3 more.
By apparent size it is number 190 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 11643 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sd |
| Angular diameter | 4.29′ |
| Right ascension | 03h06m09.9s |
| Declination | +42°22′19.3″ |
| Constellation | Perseus |
| Inclination | 72.2° |
| Light travel time | 130 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 4.3 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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