NGC 2559 — SBc in Puppis
SBc in Puppis, 4.1 arcminutes across, its light 75 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 2559
What you are looking at
NGC 2559 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 64° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 90,000 light-years, close to 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. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 475 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2002hc. It is cited in 79 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 25 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 2559 is light that left it about 75 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,555 km/s (3.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 2559 lies in Puppis. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in March it stands about 23° 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 2566 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 2,590,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 219 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 23222 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBc |
| Angular diameter | 4.14′ |
| Right ascension | 08h17m06.1s |
| Declination | -27°27′20.6″ |
| Constellation | Puppis |
| Inclination | 63.5° |
| Light travel time | 75 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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