NGC 2648 — Sa in Cancer
Sa in Cancer, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 99 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 2648
What you are looking at
NGC 2648 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. 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 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 one of a pair of galaxies. Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 89, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. It is cited in 93 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 15 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 2648 is light that left it about 99 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,062 km/s (4.6 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 2648 lies in Cancer. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in March it stands about 64° 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 4550 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 2,080,000 light-years from it); UGC 4590 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 2,490,000 light-years from it); UGC 4599 (1.5° away on the sky, at least 2,580,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 463 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 24464 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sa |
| Angular diameter | 3.15′ |
| Right ascension | 08h42m39.8s |
| Declination | +14°17′08.0″ |
| Constellation | Cancer |
| Inclination | 83.7° |
| Light travel time | 99 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 3.1 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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