NGC 1620 — SABc in Eridanus
SABc in Eridanus, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 168 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 1620
What you are looking at
NGC 1620 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. We see it almost exactly edge-on, so its whole disc appears as one thin band of light, with dust showing as a dark line along its length. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 169,000 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. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2009K. It is cited in 148 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 1620 is light that left it about 168 million years ago; on Earth, Pangaea had begun to break apart. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 3,510 km/s (7.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 1620 lies in Eridanus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in January 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 1635 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 2,810,000 light-years from it); NGC 1593 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 3,890,000 light-years from it); NGC 1586 (1.5° away on the sky, at least 4,380,000 light-years from it); UGC 3072 (1.7° away on the sky, at least 4,910,000 light-years from it), and 5 more.
By apparent size it is number 349 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 15638 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABc |
| Angular diameter | 3.48′ |
| Right ascension | 04h36m37.3s |
| Declination | -00°08′37.0″ |
| Constellation | Eridanus |
| Inclination | 81.2° |
| Light travel time | 168 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.
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