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| name | created_by | created_date | updated_by | updated_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sculptor | skybber | 2021-07-25 07:39:47.283278 | skybber | 2021-07-25 07:39:47.283614 |
A faint constellation of the southern sky below the Whale and Aquarius, east of the Southern Fish. In this tiny constellation east of Fomalhaut lies the South Galactic Pole, which marks one of the two points on the axis of rotation of our Galaxy. The latter is shaped like a disk that rotates around its core, and the axis of rotation is perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way. The points where the axis crosses the sky are called the galactic poles. The northern galactic coordinates lie in the constellation Berenice's Hair. Because we are looking into this region as if out of our Galaxy, we can see only a small number of stars in that direction; gas and dust clouds are scattered. This is also the direction we have the best view of distant space and can observe a number of extragalactic objects. In the constellation is the so-called Sculptor system, a dwarf member of our Local Group of galaxies, only 260,000 light-years away, but with too low an areal brightness to be detected in amateur telescopes. Much more favourable is the observation of members of the galaxy cluster in Sculptor, a handful of spiral galaxies just 8 million light-years away, making it probably the closest galaxy cluster to the Local Group. Sometimes referred to as the "South Galactic Pole Group", two of these galaxies, NGC 55 and NGC 253, mainly from the equatorial regions where they stand out higher on the meridian, can be detected in ordinary trier.
