NGC 772 — Sb in Aries
Sb in Aries, 4.6 arcminutes across, its light 118 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 772
NGC 772 is a large spiral in Aries with one arm far more prominent than the other, pulled out of shape by its small companion galaxies. Amateur astronomers sometimes call it the Fiddlehead Galaxy.
What you are looking at
NGC 772 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. It is tilted about 60° to our line of sight, enough to show both the shape of its arms and the depth of its disc. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 156,000 light-years, about 1.6 times 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. Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 78, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. Three supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 2003; the most recent include SN 2003hl, SN 2003iq, SN 2022qze. It is cited in 343 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 22 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 118 million years. When it left, the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,460 km/s (5.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 772 sits within the constellation Aries. It is best placed on autumn evenings: around 9:30 pm in November it stands about 69° 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: UGC 1519 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 1,470,000 light-years from it); UGC 1500 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,640,000 light-years from it); IC 163 (2.9° away on the sky, at least 5,980,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 157 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 7525 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 4.57′ |
| Right ascension | 01h59m19.6s |
| Declination | +19°00′27.4″ |
| Constellation | Aries |
| Inclination | 59.6° |
| Light travel time | 118 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 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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