IC 10

Irregular Galaxy IC 10, type Ir+ or KBm (?), in Cassiopeia

Right Ascension 00 : 20.4 (h:m)

Declination +59 : 18 (deg:m)

Distance 4200.0 (kly)

Visual Brightness 10.3 (mag)

Apparent Dimension 5x4 (arc min)

Discovered by Lewis Swift in 1887.

Right Ascension	00 : 20.4 (h:m)
Declination	+59 : 18 (deg:m)
Distance	4200.0 (kly)
Visual Brightness	10.3 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	5x4 (arc min)

IC 10 is an outlying member of the Local Group of galaxies.

IC 10 was discovered by Lewis Swift on October 8, 1887 and included in his seventh list of nebulae ("Swift VII") found at the Warner Observatory, Rochester, NY (Swift 1889). Swift describes it as "faint star involved in a very large, extremely faint nebulosity, extremely diffuse, in line with a star of equal magnitude which with a 3rd forms a right angled triangle." J.L.E. Dreyer, in the IC catalog of 1895 (Dreyer 1895), describes it as "faint star involved in extremely faint and very large nebula." It was photographed by Heber D. Curtis of Lick Observatory on October 8, 1915, but it remained to N.U. Mayall to reveal this object's extragalactic nature in 1935. Edwin P. Hubble was the first to consider it as a Local Group member in 1936. Nevertheless, this assumption could not be confirmed until the 1960s, when Morton S. Roberts (1962) and Gerard de Vaucouleurs and H. Ables (1965) determined its radial velocity and did distance estimates.

Our image was obtained by Sven Kohle and Till Credner of Bonn, Germany, with the 1-meter telescope of the Hoher List observatory. It was created from 3 exposures with a 2048x2048 CCD camera, with B, V, and H-alpha filter. The B and V images were exposed for 30 minutes each, the H-alpha image for 245 minutes. The image is copyrighted by the observers.

Deidre A. Hunter's investigations of IC 10 with the Hubble Space Telescope (Hunter 2001)

IC 10 as a Local Group galaxy

NED data of IC 10

SIMBAD Data of IC 10

Publications on IC 10 (NASA ADS)

Observing Reports for IC 10 (IAAC Netastrocatalog)

NGC Online data for IC 10

References:

Gerard de Vaucouleurs and H. Ables, 1965. Integrated Magnitudes and Color Indices of IC 10. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 77, No. 457, pp. 272-282 [ADS: 1965PASP...77..272D]
J.L.E. Dreyer, 1895. Index Catalogue of Nebulae Found in the Years 1888 to 1894, with Notes and Corrections to the New General Catalogue. Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 51, p. 185. Reprinted 1953, London, Royal Astronomical Society.
Edwin P. Hubble, 1936. The realm of the Nebulae. Yale University Press, New Haven. Pages 124, 145.
Deidre A. Hunter, 2001. The Stellar Population and Star Clusters in the Unusual Local Group Galaxy IC 10. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 559, pp. 225-242 (September 20, 2001). [ADS: 2001ApJ...559..225H] - [Preprint: astro-ph/0105456]
N.U. Mayall, 1935. An Extra-Galactic Object 3 deg from the Plane of the Galaxy. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 47, No . 280, pp. 317-318 [ADS: 1935PASP...47..317M]
Morton S. Roberts, 1962. A study of neutral hydrogen in IC 10. Astronomical Journal, Vol. 67, pp. 431-436 [ADS: 1962AJ.....67..431R]
Lewis Swift, 1889. Astronomische Nachrichten, Vol. 120, No. 2859, col. 33-38. [ADS: 1889AN....120...33S] Referred to as "Swift VII" in the IC I.

Hartmut Frommert
Christine Kronberg
[contact]

Last Modification: January 5, 2001