Key facts
- Constellation
- Aries
- Right ascension
- 02 34 13.385
- Declination
- +29 ° 18 ′ 40.47 ″
- Heliocentric radial velocity
- 1,541 km/s
- Distance
- 49.8 Mly (15.28 Mpc )
- Type
- Sb or Sd
- Mass
- 1.2 × 10 M ☉ M ☉
- Apparent size v
- 10 arcmin
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- spiral galaxy
- Constellation
- Aries
- Distance from Earth
- 22.7
- Image
- NGC972-hst-R658GB814.jpg
Show 11 more facts
- Commons category
- NGC 972
- discoverer or inventor
- William Herschel
- time of discovery or invention
- 1784-09-11
- catalog code
- [DC78] UGC 2045
- radial velocity
- 1539
- declination
- 29.3112417
- redshift
- 0.005147
- apparent magnitude
- 7.863
- galaxy morphological type
- Sab
- right ascension
- 38.5557708
- epoch
- J2000.0
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
NGC 972 is a dusty spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Aries, located at an approximate distance of 49.8 Mly from the Milky Way. It was discovered in 1784 by William Herschel. The galactic features suggest it may have undergone a merger with a gas-rich companion, giving it asymmetrical arms, plus starburst activity in the nucleus and an off-planar nuclear ring. The inner 3.6 kpc of the galaxy is undergoing star formation at the rate of 2.1–2.7 M☉·yr, but it lacks a nuclear bulge.
On October 16, 2008, a possible supernova event was observed about 16.2″ west and 19.5″ north of the Galactic Center. It reached magnitude 14.7 in the infrared K' band, but only a possible very faint transient event was observed in the visual frequency range, most likely as a result of strong extinction.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Q1040625” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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