NGC 936 — S0-a in Cetus
S0-a in Cetus, 4.5 arcminutes across, its light 69 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 936
What you are looking at
NGC 936 is a lenticular galaxy: a disc galaxy that has largely used up the gas it needs to form new stars, so its disc is smooth and has no spiral arms. It is tilted about 50° 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 89,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), close to the width of the Milky Way.
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. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2003gs. It is cited in 376 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 936 is light that left it about 69 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,432 km/s (3.2 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 936 sits within the constellation Cetus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in December it stands about 49° 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 941 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 250,000 light-years from it); UGC 1945 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 290,000 light-years from it); NGC 955 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 880,000 light-years from it); UGC 1862 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 1,540,000 light-years from it), and 2 more.
By apparent size it is number 167 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 9359 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0-a |
| Angular diameter | 4.46′ |
| Right ascension | 02h27m37.4s |
| Declination | -01°09′21.5″ |
| Constellation | Cetus |
| Inclination | 50.4° |
| Light travel time | 69 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 4.5 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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