NGC 1332 is an almost edge-on

elliptical galaxy An elliptical galaxy is a type of galaxy with an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless image. They are one of the four main classes of galaxy described by Edwin Hubble in his Hubble sequence and 1936 work ''The R ...

located in constellation of Eridanus. Situated about 70 million light years away, it is a member of the

Eridanus cluster The Eridanus Cluster is a galaxy cluster roughly from Earth, containing about 73 main Galaxy, galaxies and about 200 total galaxies. About 30% have Hubble sequence, Hubble classifications of elliptical or S0 and the remaining 70% are spiral o ...

of galaxies, a cluster of about 200 galaxies. It is also the brightest member of the NGC 1332 Group. It was discovered by

William Herschel Frederick William Herschel (; german: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline H ...

on 9 December 1784. NGC 1332 has a

Hubble classification The Hubble sequence is a morphological classification scheme for galaxies invented by Edwin Hubble in 1926. It is often colloquially known as the Hubble tuning-fork diagram because the shape in which it is traditionally represented resembles a t ...

of E, which indicates it is an elliptical galaxy. It is moving away from the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...

at a rate of 1,553 km/s. Its size on the night sky is 4.5' x 1.4' which is proportional to its real size of 92 000 ly. NGC 1332 is an early-type galaxy. Despite their name, early-type galaxies are much older than spiral galaxies, and mostly comprise old, red-colored stars. Very little star formation occurs in these galaxies; the lack of star formation in elliptical galaxies appears to start at the center and then slowly propagates outward. One

supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...

has been observed in NGC 1332: SN 1982E (type unknown, mag. 14).

Black hole

NGC 1332 is known by its possessing a

supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical obj ...

at the center. In 2016, a team from

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

used the

Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is an astronomical interferometer of 66 radio telescopes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, which observe electromagnetic radiation at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The arr ...

(ALMA) to collect high resolution data. They were able to measure the mass of the black hole. They determined the mass of about 660 million solar-masses with an uncertainty of just 10%. NGC 1332's black hole is the most massive black hole in the

Eridanus Cluster The Eridanus Cluster is a galaxy cluster roughly from Earth, containing about 73 main Galaxy, galaxies and about 200 total galaxies. About 30% have Hubble sequence, Hubble classifications of elliptical or S0 and the remaining 70% are spiral o ...

, and it is even more massive than NGC 1399's black hole ( NGC 1399 is the

Fornax cluster The Fornax Cluster is a cluster of galaxies lying at a distance of 19 megaparsecs (62 million light-years). It has an estimated mass of solar masses, making it the second richest galaxy cluster within 100 million light-years, after the consider ...

's central galaxy).

Gallery

File:NGC 1332 PanS.jpg,

Pan-STARRS The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS1; List of observatory codes, obs. code: IAU code#F51, F51 and Pan-STARRS2 obs. code: IAU code#F52, F52) located at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, US, consists of astronomical c ...

image of NGC 1332 File:NGC 1332 DSS.jpg, DSS image of NGC 1332

References

External links

* Eridanus (constellation) Elliptical galaxies

1332 Year 1332 ( MCCCXXXII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events * February 18 – Amda Seyon I, Emperor of Ethiopia, begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim provinces ...

012838 {{Elliptical-galaxy-stub