NGC 7814 — Sab in Pegasus
Sab in Pegasus, 4.4 arcminutes across, its light 51 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 7814
NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero: an edge-on spiral with a large bright bulge and a thin dust lane, reminiscent of the famous Sombrero Galaxy.
What you are looking at
NGC 7814 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 71° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 64,000 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 a member of a group of galaxies. Patrick Moore listed it as Caldwell 43 in his 1995 catalogue of the finest deep-sky objects for amateur observers. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2021rhu. It is cited in 321 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 15 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 7814 is light that left it about 51 million years ago; on Earth, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,053 km/s (2.4 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
NGC 7814 lies in Pegasus. It is best placed on autumn evenings: around 9:30 pm in October it stands about 66° 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: UGC 17 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 820,000 light-years from it); UGC 12893 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 1,110,000 light-years from it); NGC 14 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 1,210,000 light-years from it); UGC 47 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 1,230,000 light-years from it), and 1 more.
By apparent size it is number 176 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 218 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sab |
| Angular diameter | 4.37′ |
| Right ascension | 00h03m15.0s |
| Declination | +16°08′44.2″ |
| Constellation | Pegasus |
| Inclination | 70.7° |
| Light travel time | 51 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 4.4 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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