NGC 2424 — Sb in Lynx
Sb in Lynx, 3.4 arcminutes across, its light 160 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 2424
What you are looking at
NGC 2424 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. We see it almost exactly edge-on, so its whole disc appears as one thin band of light, with dust showing as a dark line along its length. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 156,000 light-years, about 1.6 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a LINER galaxy: its nucleus shows the faint, low-level activity of a black hole feeding slowly. It is cited in 87 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 2424 today set out about 160 million years ago, when Pangaea had begun to break apart. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 3,345 km/s (7.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 2424 lies in Lynx. It is best placed on winter evenings: around 9:30 pm in February it stands about 89° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: UGC 3868 (2.5° away on the sky, at least 6,820,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 392 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 21558 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 3.37′ |
| Right ascension | 07h40m39.3s |
| Declination | +39°13′59.8″ |
| Constellation | Lynx |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 160 million years |
| Bar | yes, from the catalogue |
Check every figure above in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
What is sold
A print of this galaxy and the record of the calculation, once. When it sells it leaves the register and is not offered again. We assign no names and no ownership — nobody can sell you those.
At 3.4 arcminutes this is a Exceptional galaxy, which is the tier where a real photograph shows clear structure and dust lanes. The tier comes from the measured diameter, not from a price list.
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