IC 356 — Sb in Camelopardalis
Sb in Camelopardalis, 4.0 arcminutes across, its light 43 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About IC 356
What you are looking at
IC 356 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. We look down on it almost face-on, so its structure is laid out as if on a map. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 50,000 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
Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 213, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. It is cited in 165 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 18 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from IC 356 today set out about 43 million years ago, when the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 895 km/s (2.0 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
IC 356 lies in Camelopardalis. From most of the United States it never sets: it circles the north celestial pole all year, and stands highest on winter evenings, around January.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: UGC 2955 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 110,000 light-years from it); NGC 1485 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 900,000 light-years from it); NGC 1469 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 1,050,000 light-years from it); UGC 2855 (1.7° away on the sky, at least 1,270,000 light-years from it), and 1 more.
By apparent size it is number 237 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 14508 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 4.02′ |
| Right ascension | 04h07m46.9s |
| Declination | +69°48′44.7″ |
| Constellation | Camelopardalis |
| Inclination | 22.4° |
| Light travel time | 43 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 4.0 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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