IC 3078

IC 3078 is a spiral galaxy with a ring structure located in Virgo. Its redshift is 0.066148, meaning IC 3078 is located 905 million light-years from Earth. With an apparent dimension of 0.50 x 0.5 arcmin, IC 3038 is about 133,000 light-years across. It was discovered by Royal Harwood Frost on May 7, 1904 and is listed in the Virgo Cluster catalogue as VCC 174. However, it is not a member of the Virgo Cluster, but instead a background galaxy.

Features
The nucleus of IC 3078 is found to be active. It is a Seyfert galaxy of type 1.9 and classified a Markarian galaxy (designated Mrk 764), because compared to other galaxies its nucleus emits excessive amounts of ultraviolet rays. More IC 3078 is a starburst galaxy since a study published in 1983, mentions it displays a bright star-like nucleus. However, it does not display broad-line emission spectra which is the characteristic of Seyfert galaxies. Instead its features can be explained through the presence of the population of hot, young stars. IC 3078 is known to be a star-burst nuclei, in which the phenomenon might supply enough material for gravitational accretion, hence the development of active galaxies.

According to a further study done by Hideaki and Yoshiaki, it is proven IC 3078 is classified an old starburst galaxy, which is deficient in O-type stars and does not exhibit strong line emission. But however, IC 3078 still has many B stars which is expected to heat up dust grains and generate strong continuum emission in far-infrared areas. Furthermore, IC 3078 lies in the ~9033 square degrees of the sky which is observed by the VLA FIRST survey radio catalogue. From the results, a positive detection of radio emission is found, IC 3078 included, in 775 AGN of which 214 of them show new detections at radio wavelengths.

Moreover, IC 3078 has been observed by IRAS for its optically selected starburst nuclei to derived its far-infrared luminosity and through tabulating its distance and blue and Hα luminosity, written by Deutsch and Willner. It was also one of the galaxies to be studied by Kiso Survey for ultraviolet-excess, which was detected on multi-color plates by the Kiso Schmidt telescope for 10 survey fields and catalogued down to a magnitude of 18.

In a study conducted in 1995, which radio data is presented for IC 3078 and 898 other Markarian galaxies which was observed at v=4.755 GHz through the NRAO-Green Bank 300 foot (91m) telescope, scientists found that detection rates increased to (49%, 33%) amongst seyferts and to (73%, 42%) for those with starburst nuclei. From the study, it is found that IC 3078 has a radio luminosity of h^2^P_1.415_ < 10^23^ W Hz^-1^, a characteristic of normal galaxies.