PGC 1852, The Loneliest Of Galaxies
The Loneliest Of Galaxies...
When you carry this title, it's a sad thing. Not only for the galaxy itself, but also for the possible inhabitants of this galaxy:
If we didn't live in our Milky Way, but in the galaxy "PGC 1852", we wouldn't have known until the 1960s that there were other galaxies out there
like ours. Because in a radius of 100 million light years there is no galaxy, which the inhabitants could have examined. But fortunately, we don't live
in the wastelands of the universe (where the density is only one atom per cubic meter), but hang out in the local group - a fun bunch of small and large
galaxies.
PGC 1852 itself is a Hubble Type "SB" barred spiral 60,000 light-years across. It is located 320 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces.
With an absolute magnitude of M= -19.8mag the galaxy reaches a luminosity of 7 billion suns. The theory says that the galactic filaments are attracted
by nearby superclusters and thus "sucked out" of the voids. What remains are isolated galaxies like PGC 1852.
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If you want to see this loneliest of all galaxies, you have to point your telescope to the constellation Pisces. There you can find a small galaxy in a
relatively starless region, which is with 15.2mag quite faint - no surprise at this distance. With my 20" f/3 I could also see a very faint stellar core at
270x in the center.
I estimate that you will need at least 12" aperture to see the galaxy for sure.
