The Sculptor Group is a loose
group of galaxies visible near the south galactic pole.
The group is one of the closest groups of galaxies to the
Local Group
The Local Group is the galaxy group that includes the Milky Way.
It has a total diameter of roughly , and a total mass of the order of .
It consists of two collections of galaxies in a "dumbbell" shape: the Milky Way and its satellites form ...
; the distance to the center of the group 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 ey ...
is approximately .
The
Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) and a few other galaxies form a gravitationally-bound core in the center of this group. A few other galaxies at the periphery may be associated with the group but may not be gravitationally bound. Because most of the galaxies in this group are actually weakly gravitationally bound, the group may also be described as a
filament
The word filament, which is descended from Latin ''filum'' meaning " thread", is used in English for a variety of thread-like structures, including:
Astronomy
* Galaxy filament, the largest known cosmic structures in the universe
* Solar filament ...
.
It is considered to be at an early stage of evolution in which galaxies are still falling into the group along filamentary structures.
Members
The table below lists galaxies that have been identified as associated with the Sculptor Galaxy (and hence associated with the group) by I. D. Karachentsev and collaborators.
The object names used in the above table differ from the names used by Karachentsev and collaborators. NGC, IC, UGC, and
PGC numbers have been used when possible to allow for easier referencing.
Field galaxies
The irregular galaxy
NGC 55, the spiral galaxy
NGC 300, and their companion galaxies have been considered by many researchers to be part of this group. However, recent distance measurements to these and other galaxies in the same region of the sky show that NGC 55, NGC 300, and their companions may simply be foreground galaxies that are physically unassociated with the Sculptor Group.
The galaxies
NGC 24 and
NGC 45 are located in the vicinity of the Sculptor Group, but are now considered background objects.
References
{{Sky, 00, 48, 00, -, 25, 17, 00, 12700000
Virgo Supercluster