Picture of the Day · NASA
NGC 3660 and Burçin's Galaxy
2026-05-26
The upper galaxy might be more photogenic, but the lower galaxy is more unusual. The galaxy up top is NGC 3660, a spiral galaxy similar to our own Milky Way galaxy in that it has several bright blue spiral arms and a central bar of stars, dust, and gas. Captured by chance in the featured deep and colorful image, surprisingly, is SN 2026cff, a supernova found just to the right of the central bar. Farther in the distance is the bottom galaxy, known informally as Burçin’s galaxy, but formally cataloged as LEDA 1000714. The center of this galaxy appears to be an old elliptical galaxy, but it is strangely surrounded by not one but two rings of stars. What created Burçin's galaxy is a mystery and remains a continuing topic of research, but it likely involves the accretion of one or more smaller galaxies.
via NASA APOD
Key facts
- Discovered by
- August Kopff
- Discovery site
- Heidelberg
- Discovery date
- 22 August 1906
- Pronunciation
- / m æ l ə ˈ b ɑːr /
- Named after
- Mount Malabar , West Java
- Alternative designations
- 1906 UT
- Observation arc
- 114.41 yr (41,787 d)
- Aphelion
- 3.1294 AU (468.15 Gm )
- Perihelion
- 2.8436 AU (425.40 Gm)
- Semi major axis
- 2.9865 AU (446.77 Gm)
- Orbital period sidereal
- 5.16 yr (1,885.1 d)
- Mean anomaly
- 326.44 °
- Mean motion
- 0° 11 27.492 / day
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- asteroid
- Named after
- Gunung Malabar
- Followed by
- Q114734
- Follows
- 753 Tiflis
- Parent body
- Sun
- Minor-planet group
- asteroid belt
- Diameter
- +94.522
- Orbital period
- +1884.870048941314
Show 4 more facts
- P61
- August Kopff
- P65
Article
754 Malabar is a minor planet orbiting the Sun. It was discovered in 1906 by German astronomer August Kopff from Heidelberg, and was named in honor of a Dutch-German solar eclipse expedition to Christmas Island in 1922. Malabar is the name of a city and mountain in Indonesia. This object is orbiting at a distance of 2.99 AU from the Sun with a period of 5.16 years and an eccentricity (ovalness) of 0.048. Its orbital plane is inclined at an angle of 24.6° to the plane of the ecliptic.
Photometric measurements of this asteroid made in 2003 resulted in a light curve showing a rotation period of 11.740±0.005 h and a brightness variation of 0.45±0.03 in magnitude. This is a Ch-class asteroid in the Bus asteroid taxonomy, showing a broad absorption band in its carbonaceous spectrum near a wavelength of 0.7 μm. This feature is interpreted as due to iron-bearing phyllosilicates on the surface. 754 Malabar spans a girth of 102.8 km. Between 2002 and 2022, 754 Malabar has been observed to occult sixteen stars.