NGC 2207 — SABc in Canis Major
SABc in Canis Major, 4.8 arcminutes across, its light 132 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 2207
NGC 2207 and its partner IC 2163 are two spiral galaxies in the early stages of a collision. Hubble's image of the pair, with IC 2163 drawn out into a long arm along NGC 2207's edge, is one of its best-known pictures of interacting galaxies.
What you are looking at
NGC 2207 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. It is tilted about 58° to our line of sight, enough to show both the shape of its arms and the depth of its disc. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 183,000 light-years, about 1.9 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
Four supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 1975; the most recent include SN 1999ec, SN 2013ai, SN 2019eez. It is cited in 303 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 30 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 2207 is light that left it about 132 million years ago; on Earth, the first birds had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,748 km/s (6.1 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 2207 sits within the constellation Canis Major. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in February it stands about 29° 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: IC 2163 (1′ away on the sky, at least 50,000 light-years from it); NGC 2216 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 3,180,000 light-years from it); NGC 2179 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 4,510,000 light-years from it); NGC 2223 (2.4° away on the sky, at least 5,500,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 139 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 18749 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABc |
| Angular diameter | 4.81′ |
| Right ascension | 06h16m22.0s |
| Declination | -21°22′21.8″ |
| Constellation | Canis Major |
| Inclination | 58.2° |
| Light travel time | 132 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 4.8 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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