NGC 217 — SBa in Cetus
SBa in Cetus, 3.2 arcminutes across, its light 188 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 217
What you are looking at
NGC 217 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. 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 174,000 light-years, about 1.8 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an emission-line galaxy: its spectrum shows the glow of gas lit by young stars. It is cited in 61 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 15 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 188 million years. When it left, dinosaurs had begun to dominate. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 3,934 km/s (8.8 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 217 lies in Cetus. It is best placed on autumn evenings: around 9:30 pm in November it stands about 40° 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 151 (1.9° away on the sky, at least 6,120,000 light-years from it); NGC 270 (2.6° away on the sky, at least 8,480,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 448 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 2482 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBa |
| Angular diameter | 3.20′ |
| Right ascension | 00h41m33.9s |
| Declination | -10°01′17.3″ |
| Constellation | Cetus |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 188 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 3.2 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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