NGC 678 — SBb in Aries
SBb in Aries, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 134 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 678
What you are looking at
NGC 678 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. 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 119,000 light-years, about 1.2 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole, though dust hides part of that glow from us. It is cited in 128 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 14 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 678 today set out about 134 million years ago, when the first birds had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,802 km/s (6.3 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 678 lies in Aries. It is best placed on autumn evenings: around 9:30 pm in November it stands about 72° 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 691 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 890,000 light-years from it); IC 167 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 950,000 light-years from it); NGC 697 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 1,320,000 light-years from it); IC 163 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 3,000,000 light-years from it), and 1 more.
By apparent size it is number 487 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 6690 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBb |
| Angular diameter | 3.08′ |
| Right ascension | 01h49m24.8s |
| Declination | +21°59′50.2″ |
| Constellation | Aries |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 134 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 3.1 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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