NGC 2903 — Sbc in Leo
Sbc in Leo, 11.9 arcminutes across, its light 27 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 2903
NGC 2903 is one of the brightest galaxies in the sky that Charles Messier never listed, which surprises many observers who find it easily in Leo. It is a barred spiral with a centre that glows with new stars: the bar funnels gas inward, where it forms a ring of intense star formation around the nucleus. In Hubble's images its arms are lined with clusters of young blue stars and threads of dark dust.
What you are looking at
NGC 2903 is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 67° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 93,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), close to the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a galaxy with an active nucleus, powered by its central black hole. It is cited in 1,226 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 36 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 2903 is light that left it about 27 million years ago; on Earth, Antarctica had begun to freeze. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 555 km/s (1.2 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe. For a galaxy this close, its own motion through space is a large share of that speed, so the distance worked out from it is approximate; distances measured from individual stars in it can differ.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 2903 sits within the constellation Leo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in March it stands about 72° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
By apparent size it is number 8 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 27077 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 11.94′ |
| Right ascension | 09h32m10.1s |
| Declination | +21°30′05.6″ |
| Constellation | Leo |
| Inclination | 67.1° |
| Light travel time | 27 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 11.9 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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