NGC 3044 — SBc in Sextans
SBc in Sextans, 4.2 arcminutes across, its light 62 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3044
What you are looking at
NGC 3044 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. Its disc is turned almost exactly side-on to us: the galaxy appears as a narrow blade of light, and its dust as a dark seam running along it. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 76,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 77% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1983E. It is cited in 242 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 31 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 3044 is light that left it about 62 million years ago; on Earth, an asteroid had ended the age of dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,290 km/s (2.9 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 3044 sits within the constellation Sextans. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in March it stands about 52° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
By apparent size it is number 207 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 28517 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBc |
| Angular diameter | 4.20′ |
| Right ascension | 09h53m40.9s |
| Declination | +01°34′46.5″ |
| Constellation | Sextans |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 62 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 4.2 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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