NGC 2403 (original) (raw)

Discovered by William Herschel in 1788.

This beautiful spiral galaxy is an outlying member of the M81 group of galaxies, and thus about 12 million light years distant.

NGC 2403 is among the more conspicuous Northern objects which Charles Messier missed when compiling his catalog. Thus its discovery was left to William Herschel.

The image in this webpage was obtained by Michael Purcellon December 29, 1995 at 00:53 from his driveway in New Mexico.

More images by Michael Purcell.

One supernova has been recorded in this galaxy so far: Supernova 1954J, which was discovered by Zwicky (PASP 84, 844) on October 24, 1954. This supernova was situated 36E, 100N of the galaxy's nucleus and reached mag 16.0 in its maximum.

In the SAC 110 best NGC object list.Caldwell 7 in Patrick Moore's list. In the RASC's Finest N.G.C. Objects Objects list.