NGC 2782 — SABa in Lynx
SABa in Lynx, 3.3 arcminutes across, its light 126 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 2782
What you are looking at
NGC 2782 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. It is tilted about 45° 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 118,000 light-years, about 1.2 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole, though dust hides part of that glow from us. Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 215, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 1268 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1994ak. It is cited in 497 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 45 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 2782 today set out about 126 million years ago, when the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,623 km/s (5.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 2782 lies in Lynx. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in March it stands about 90° high in the north, close to overhead, 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 4889 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 1,160,000 light-years from it); UGC 4867 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,690,000 light-years from it); NGC 2785 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,820,000 light-years from it); UGC 4871 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 1,890,000 light-years from it), and 2 more.
By apparent size it is number 430 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 26034 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABa |
| Angular diameter | 3.25′ |
| Right ascension | 09h14m05.1s |
| Declination | +40°06′49.4″ |
| Constellation | Lynx |
| Inclination | 45.2° |
| Light travel time | 126 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 3.3 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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