IC 2531 — Sc in Antlia
Sc in Antlia, 6.5 arcminutes across, its light 119 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About IC 2531
What you are looking at
IC 2531 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. Its disc is turned almost exactly side-on to us: the galaxy appears as a narrow blade of light, and its dust as a dark seam running along it. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 224,000 light-years, about 2.3 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. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2007cj. It is cited in 147 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 21 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 119 million years. When it left, the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,474 km/s (5.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, IC 2531 sits within the constellation Antlia. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in March it stands about 20° 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 3089 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 2,650,000 light-years from it); IC 2537 (2.2° away on the sky, at least 4,580,000 light-years from it); NGC 3084 (2.5° away on the sky, at least 5,140,000 light-years from it); NGC 3051 (2.7° away on the sky, at least 5,510,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 59 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 28909 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 6.53′ |
| Right ascension | 09h59m55.5s |
| Declination | -29°37′03.5″ |
| Constellation | Antlia |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 119 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 6.5 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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