NGC 3166 — S0-a in Sextans
S0-a in Sextans, 4.5 arcminutes across, its light 64 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3166
What you are looking at
NGC 3166 is a lenticular galaxy: a disc galaxy that has largely used up the gas it needs to form new stars, so its disc is smooth and has no spiral arms. It is tilted about 56° 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 84,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), 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. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2012cw. It is cited in 249 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 3166 today set out about 64 million years ago, when an asteroid had ended the age of dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,332 km/s (3.0 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe. For a galaxy this close, its own motion through space is a large share of that speed, so the distance worked out from it is approximate; distances measured from individual stars in it can differ.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 3166 lies in Sextans. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 53° 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 3165 (5′ away on the sky, at least 90,000 light-years from it); NGC 3169 (0.1° away on the sky, at least 140,000 light-years from it); NGC 3156 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 440,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 165 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 29814 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0-a |
| Angular diameter | 4.50′ |
| Right ascension | 10h13m45.7s |
| Declination | +03°25′29.4″ |
| Constellation | Sextans |
| Inclination | 56.2° |
| Light travel time | 64 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 4.5 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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