NGC 2787

NGC 2787 is a barred lenticular galaxy approximately 24 million light-years away in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Major. It was discovered on December 3, 1788 by German-born astronomer William Herschel. J. L. E. Dreyer described it as, "bright, pretty large, a little extended 90°, much brighter middle, mottled but not resolved, very small (faint) star involved to the southeast". The visible galaxy has an angular size of and an apparent visual magnitude of 11.8.
This galaxy is small and isolated with a morphological classification of SB(r)0+, which indicates a barred spiral (SB) with a ring around the bar (r). Being a lenticular galaxy, it has the large halo of an elliptical galaxy. The disk is inclined at an angle of to the line of sight from the Earth, with the major axis aligned along a position angle of . The galaxy has an unusually high mass-to-light ratio, much greater than for a typical spiral galaxy. The distribution of the galaxy's neutral hydrogen forms a clumpy ring with a radius of , double that of the visible galaxy, with a mass of . This ring appears misaligned with the central disk.
NGC 2787 contains a low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) at its core, which is a type of region that is characterized by spectral line emission from weakly ionized atoms. LINERs are very common within lenticular galaxies, with approximately one-fifth of nearby lenticular galaxies containing LINERs. The supermassive black hole at the center has a mass of . The central region of the galaxy contains dust rings that are tilted with respect to the disk, which may be the result of an encounter with another galaxy.