NGC 949 — Sb in Triangulum
Sb in Triangulum, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 30 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 949
What you are looking at
NGC 949 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 68° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 27,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a quarter the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a group of galaxies. It is cited in 152 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 949 is light that left it about 30 million years ago; on Earth, Antarctica had begun to freeze. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 615 km/s (1.4 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
NGC 949 lies in Triangulum. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in December it stands about 87° 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 2014 (1.6° away on the sky, at least 820,000 light-years from it); UGC 1865 (1.6° away on the sky, at least 830,000 light-years from it); NGC 959 (1.7° away on the sky, at least 860,000 light-years from it); IC 239 (2.1° away on the sky, at least 1,110,000 light-years from it), and 4 more.
By apparent size it is number 473 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 9566 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 3.10′ |
| Right ascension | 02h30m48.7s |
| Declination | +37°08′11.7″ |
| Constellation | Triangulum |
| Inclination | 68.3° |
| Light travel time | 30 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 3.1 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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