NGC 988 — Sc in Cetus
Sc in Cetus, 4.3 arcminutes across, its light 72 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 988
What you are looking at
NGC 988 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 69° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 91,000 light-years, close to the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus shines brightly with the light of gas falling into its central black hole. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2017gmr. It is cited in 115 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 988 today set out about 72 million years ago, when dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,506 km/s (3.4 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 988 sits within the constellation Cetus. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in December it stands about 41° 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 1042 (1.5° away on the sky, at least 1,930,000 light-years from it); NGC 1035 (1.6° away on the sky, at least 1,980,000 light-years from it); NGC 1047 (1.7° away on the sky, at least 2,190,000 light-years from it); NGC 991 (2.2° away on the sky, at least 2,770,000 light-years from it), and 2 more.
By apparent size it is number 181 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 9843 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 4.33′ |
| Right ascension | 02h35m27.7s |
| Declination | -09°21′21.4″ |
| Constellation | Cetus |
| Inclination | 69.1° |
| Light travel time | 72 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 4.3 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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