NGC 1784 — Sc in Lepus
Sc in Lepus, 4.1 arcminutes across, its light 111 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 1784
What you are looking at
NGC 1784 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 66° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 132,000 light-years, about 1.3 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole, though dust hides part of that glow from us. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2022xkq. It is cited in 124 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 14 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 1784 today set out about 111 million years ago, when the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,316 km/s (5.2 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 1784 lies in Lepus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in January it stands about 38° 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 1843 (2.5° away on the sky, at least 4,750,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 226 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 16716 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 4.10′ |
| Right ascension | 05h05m27.1s |
| Declination | -11°52′17.1″ |
| Constellation | Lepus |
| Inclination | 66.1° |
| Light travel time | 111 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 4.1 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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