NGC 1003 is aspiral galaxy at the western edge of thePerseusconstellation.[9] It is located at a distance of about 36 millionlight years from theMilky Way and is receding with a heliocentricradial velocity of624 km/s.[4] This galaxy was discovered by the Anglo-German astronomerWilliam Herschel on October 6, 1784, who described it as "pretty faint, large, extended 90°±, much brighter middle, mottled but not resolved".[10] It is a member of theNGC 1023 group of galaxies.[6]
Themorphological class of NGC 1003 is SAcd, which means it is an unbarred spiral galaxy (SA) with somewhat loosely-woundspiral arms (cd). It is inclined by an angle of 70° to the line of sight from the Earth, with the major axis aligned along aposition angle of 276°. The visual disk of the galaxy shows a substantial warping in the eastern side, turning it almost face on. The estimatedstar formation rate is0.40 M☉·yr−1.[7] It has avirial mass of3×1012M☉ and a mass-to-light ratio of 0.7.[8]
^Sinnott, Roger W.; Perryman, Michael A. C. (1997).Millennium Star Atlas. Vol. 1. Sky Publishing Corporation and the European Space Agency. p. 100.ISBN0-933346-84-0.
![NGC 1003 taken from the Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.[15]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aDeep_Dive_into_a_Galaxy_Cluster.jpg)
Media related toNGC 1003 at Wikimedia Commons
