IC 764 — SABc in Hydra
SABc in Hydra, 4.6 arcminutes across, its light 102 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About IC 764
What you are looking at
IC 764 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. 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 138,000 light-years, about 1.4 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 85 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of IC 764 is light that left it about 102 million years ago; on Earth, the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,136 km/s (4.8 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, IC 764 sits within the constellation Hydra. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May 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 4106 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,350,000 light-years from it); IC 2996 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 1,760,000 light-years from it); IC 760 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 1,860,000 light-years from it); IC 2995 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 3,640,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 153 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 38711 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABc |
| Angular diameter | 4.64′ |
| Right ascension | 12h10m14.2s |
| Declination | -29°44′11.7″ |
| Constellation | Hydra |
| Inclination | 82.9° |
| Light travel time | 102 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 4.6 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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