NGC 672 — SBc in Triangulum
SBc in Triangulum, 7.0 arcminutes across, its light 21 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 672
What you are looking at
NGC 672 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 70° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 42,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about half 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. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 338 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. It is cited in 308 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 24 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 21 million years. When it left, grasslands were spreading across the continents. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 426 km/s (1.0 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
In the sky, NGC 672 sits within the constellation Triangulum. It is best placed on autumn evenings: around 9:30 pm in November it stands about 77° 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: IC 1727 (0.1° away on the sky, at least 50,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 44 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 6595 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBc |
| Angular diameter | 7.01′ |
| Right ascension | 01h47m53.9s |
| Declination | +27°25′55.1″ |
| Constellation | Triangulum |
| Inclination | 69.6° |
| Light travel time | 21 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 7.0 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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