IC 5078 — Sc in Capricornus
Sc in Capricornus, 3.2 arcminutes across, its light 71 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About IC 5078
What you are looking at
IC 5078 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. We see it almost exactly edge-on, so its whole disc appears as one thin band of light, with dust showing as a dark line along its length. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 66,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 68% of the Milky Way’s width.
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 72 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 15 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of IC 5078 is light that left it about 71 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,474 km/s (3.3 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
IC 5078 lies in Capricornus. It is best placed on autumn evenings: around 9:30 pm in September it stands about 33° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
By apparent size it is number 437 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 65960 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 3.24′ |
| Right ascension | 21h02m31.2s |
| Declination | -16°49′05.0″ |
| Constellation | Capricornus |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 71 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 3.2 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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