Sculptor Galaxy
| Sculptor Galaxy | |
|---|---|
The Sculptor Galaxy taken with the ESO VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
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| Observation data (J2000 epoch) | |
| Constellation | Sculptor |
| Right ascension | 00h 47m 33s |
| Declination | −25° 17′ 18″ |
| Redshift | 0.000811 |
| Helio radial velocity | 243 ± 2 km/s |
| Distance | 11.4 ± 0.7 Mly (3.5 ± 0.2 Mpc) |
| Apparent magnitude (V) | 8.0 |
| Characteristics | |
| Type | SAB(s)c |
| Apparent size (V) | 27′.5 × 6′.8 |
| Other designations | |
| Silver Coin Galaxy, Silver Dollar Galaxy,NGC 253, UGCA 13,PGC 2789Caldwell 65 | |
The Sculptor Galaxy, also known as the Silver Coin or Silver Dollar Galaxy, NGC 253, is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. The Sculptor Galaxy is a starburst galaxy, which means that it is currently undergoing a period of intense star formation.
The galaxy was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783 during one of her systematic comet searches. About half a century later, John Herschel observed it using his 18-inch metallic mirror reflector at the Cape of Good Hope. He wrote "very bright and large (24′ in length); a superb object.... Its light is somewhat streaky, but I see no stars in it except 4 large and one very small one, and these seem not to belong to it, there being many near..."
In 1961 Allan Sandage wrote in the Hubble Atlas of Galaxies that the Sculptor Galaxy is "the prototype example of a special subgroup of Sc systems....photographic images of galaxies of the group are dominated by the dust pattern. Dust lanes and patches of great complexity are scattered throughout the surface. Spiral arms are often difficult to trace.... The arms are defined as much by the dust as by the spiral pattern."Bernard Y. Mills, working out of Sydney, discovered that the Sculptor Galaxy is also a fairly strong radio source.
In 1998 the Hubble Space Telescope took a detailed image of NGC 253.
As one of the brightest galaxies in the sky, the Sculptor Galaxy can be seen through binoculars and is near the star Beta Ceti. It is considered one of the most easily viewed galaxies in the sky after the Andromeda Galaxy.
The Sculptor Galaxy is a good target for observation with a telescope with a 300 mm diameter or larger. In such telescopes, it appears as a galaxy with a long, oval bulge and a mottled disc. Although the bulge appears only slightly brighter than the rest of the galaxy, it is fairly extended compared to the disk. In 400 mm scopes and larger, a dark dust lane northwest of the nucleus is visible, and over a dozen faint stars can be seen superimposed on the bulge.
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Wikipedia