NGC 697 — SABc in Aries
SABc in Aries, 3.8 arcminutes across, its light 149 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 697
What you are looking at
NGC 697 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 steeply tilted, about 75° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 164,000 light-years, about 1.7 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an HII galaxy, glowing with clouds of hydrogen lit by young stars. It is cited in 132 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 22 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 697 is light that left it about 149 million years ago; on Earth, the first birds had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 3,111 km/s (7.0 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 697 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: IC 167 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 1,150,000 light-years from it); NGC 678 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 1,460,000 light-years from it); UGC 1244 (2.3° away on the sky, at least 6,060,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 268 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 6848 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABc |
| Angular diameter | 3.81′ |
| Right ascension | 01h51m17.6s |
| Declination | +22°21′28.6″ |
| Constellation | Aries |
| Inclination | 74.6° |
| Light travel time | 149 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 3.8 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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