NGC 1507 — SBm in Eridanus
SBm in Eridanus, 3.7 arcminutes across, its light 42 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 1507
What you are looking at
NGC 1507 is a Magellanic spiral, a small, lopsided disc much like the Large Magellanic Cloud, with almost no central bulge. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. Its disc is turned almost exactly side-on to us: the galaxy appears as a narrow blade of light, and its dust as a dark seam running along it. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 45,000 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 HII galaxy, glowing with clouds of hydrogen lit by young stars. Benjamin Markarian listed it as Markarian 1080, among galaxies with unusually strong ultraviolet light. It is cited in 140 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 18 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 1507 today set out about 42 million years ago, when the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 866 km/s (1.9 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 1507 sits within the constellation Eridanus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in December it stands about 48° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
By apparent size it is number 293 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 14409 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBm |
| Angular diameter | 3.70′ |
| Right ascension | 04h04m27.2s |
| Declination | -02°11′17.0″ |
| Constellation | Eridanus |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 42 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 3.7 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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