NGC 2911 — S0 in Leo
S0 in Leo, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 154 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 2911
What you are looking at
NGC 2911 is a lenticular galaxy: a disc galaxy that has largely used up the gas it needs to form new stars, so its disc is smooth and has no spiral arms. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 64° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 154,000 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 Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole, though dust hides part of that glow from us. Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 232, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. It is cited in 262 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 33 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 2911 today set out about 154 million years ago, when Pangaea had begun to break apart. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 3,226 km/s (7.2 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 2911 sits within the constellation Leo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in March it stands about 60° 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 5093 (0.1° away on the sky, at least 360,000 light-years from it); NGC 2913 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 1,810,000 light-years from it); UGC 5082 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 1,990,000 light-years from it); NGC 2939 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 3,340,000 light-years from it), and 1 more.
By apparent size it is number 358 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 27159 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0 |
| Angular diameter | 3.46′ |
| Right ascension | 09h33m46.1s |
| Declination | +10°09′09.0″ |
| Constellation | Leo |
| Inclination | 63.7° |
| Light travel time | 154 million years |
| Bar | not recorded |
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 3.5 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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