Hoag's object
| Hoag's Object | |
|---|---|
Hoag's Object, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in July 2001
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| Observation data (J2000 epoch) | |
| Constellation | Serpens Caput |
| Right ascension | 15h 17m 14.4s |
| Declination | +21° 35′ 08″ |
| Redshift | 12740±50 km/s |
| Distance | 612.8±9.4 Mly (187.9±2.9 Mpc) |
| Apparent magnitude (B) | 16.2 |
| Characteristics | |
| Type | SA0(r) |
| Size | 121±4 kly in diameter |
| Apparent size (V) | 0′.28 × 0′.28 |
| Notable features | Ring galaxy |
| Other designations | |
| PGC 54559, PRC D-51 | |
Hoag's Object is a non-typical galaxy of the type known as a ring galaxy. The galaxy is named after Arthur Hoag who discovered it in 1950 and identified it as either a planetary nebula or a peculiar galaxy with eight billion stars.
A nearly perfect ring of young hot blue stars circles the older yellow nucleus of this ring galaxy c. 600 million light-years away in the constellation Serpens. The diameter of the 6 arcsecond inner core of the galaxy is about 17±0.7 kly (5.3±0.2 kpc) while the surrounding ring has an inner 28″ diameter of 75±3 kly (24.8±1.1 kpc) and an outer 45″ diameter of 121±4 kly (39.9±1.7 kpc), which is slightly larger than the Milky Way Galaxy. The gap separating the two stellar populations may contain some star clusters that are almost too faint to see. As rare as this type of galaxy is, another more distant ring galaxy (SDSS J151713.93+213516.8) can be seen through Hoag's Object, between the nucleus and the outer ring of the galaxy, at roughly the one o'clock position in the image shown here. The galaxy spans about 100,000 light years
Even though Hoag's Object was clearly shown on the Palomar Star Survey, it was not included in either the Morphological Catalogue of Galaxies, the Catalogue of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies, or the catalogue of galactic planetary nebulae.
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