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M 77-NGC 1055

Cet

• 43 x 300 sec - 3h 35m

NGC 1055 and M77 are located in the same region of the celestial sphere and are two particularly sought-after subjects for astrophotography. The best time to photograph them is during the month of September, when they are low on the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere. Garcia classifies NGC 1055 as belonging to the NGC 1068 Group or M77 Group. This galaxy group contains at least seven members, including M77 (NGC 1068), NGC 1073, UGC 2162, UGC 2275, UGC 2302, and UGCA 44.

M77 (also known as NGC 1068) is a spiral galaxy visible in the constellation Cetus.
It is easily spotted, located just 0.5° southeast of the star δ Ceti; it can be seen with powerful binoculars, such as 11x80, or even 10x50 on particularly clear nights.
M77 can be observed from all populated areas of Earth, thanks to its location practically above the celestial equator; therefore, there is no preferred hemisphere for its observation, and from pairs of similar latitudes in the two hemispheres, the object appears at nearly the same altitude in the sky. While from the northern hemisphere it is an object of autumn skies, from the southern hemisphere it is characteristic of the spring months. The best time for observation in the northern sky is between October and February.
M77 was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780, who described it at the time as a nebula; Méchain later communicated his discovery to Charles Messier, who included the object in his famous catalog. Both Messier and William Herschel described it as a cluster of stars. It is now known to be a galaxy.

M77 is about 47 million light-years away; it is an active galaxy whose nucleus is obscured at visible wavelengths by interstellar dust. The diameter of the molecular disk and the hot plasma associated with the obscuring matter were initially measured at radio waves; The hot dust around the nucleus was later measured by the Very Large Telescope. It is the brightest Seyfert galaxy and is a type 2. Its diameter is estimated to be 170,000 nm.
According to recent results published from observations by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, near the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole, this galaxy is the source of most of the extragalactic neutrinos detected over the years, from 2012 onwards.
Interferometric infrared observations conducted in 2024 by the Large Binocular Telescope showed that the active nucleus at the center of the galaxy emits enough light to create radiation pressure on the surrounding dust, combined with a radio jet that, as it passes through the galaxy, interacts with the clouds of material and dust, heating them, generating a phenomenon called radio jet feedback—an interaction between the jets of radiation and particles emitted by black holes and their surroundings.

NGC 1055 is a relatively nearby, edge-on barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Cetus, approximately 37 million light-years from our Milky Way.The galaxy was discovered on December 18, 1783, by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel. NGC 1055 has a luminosity class II and displays a broad 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen. It was used by Gérard de Vaucouleurs as an example of a "Sab sp" type galaxy in his morphological classification atlas of galaxies. It is considered an active galaxy of the Seyfert 2 (Sy 2) type.
The SIMBAD database classifies it as a LINER galaxy, meaning a galaxy whose nucleus displays an emission spectrum characterized by broad lines of weakly ionized atoms. The galactic bulge is crossed by a broad band of dark dust.
Based on near-infrared K-band brightness measurements of the galactic bulge of NGC 1055, a value of 107.0 is obtained, equivalent to 10 million solar masses for the supermassive black hole at its center.