Astr112 Photography Projects, Fall 2007

Galaxy (NGC128), Michael Sottong

NGC128 is a lenticular galaxy located in the constellation Pisces. A lenticular galaxy is unlike an elliptical or a spiral but has properties of each. It has a large bulge like an elliptical galaxy but also contains a disk akin to a spiral galaxy, but does not have any spiral arms. There are several nearby galaxies (NGC 125, NGC126, NGC127, NGC130 you can roll over these galaxies with the mouse to find them). NGC 127 is accreting gases from NGC 128. NGC 128 is made of billions of stars. The stars we can see in the image are fore ground stars in our galaxy and are significantly closer than the galaxies. The surrounding galaxies are low-luminosity objects while NGC 128 is a medium luminosity.

NGC 128 can be seen edge on with a tilted disk and is the brightest point in the middle of the image. NGC 130 is off to NGC 128's left and NGC 127 is on it's right. NGC126 is the dim object below NGC 128 on its right. The galaxies can be distinguished from the stars in this image due to their slight disks that look like a smudge. NGC128 is 58.13 Mpc away from earth. It has a linear size of 35kpc.

References:

Pathways Through an Eclectic Universe http://www.iac.es/proyecto/eclectic/pages/view_abstract.php?aid=61

NASA/IPAC EXTRAGALACTIC DATABASE http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/nph-ex_refcode?refcode=1997A%26A...318L..39E