NGC 3227 — SABa in Leo
SABa in Leo, 4.0 arcminutes across, its light 54 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3227
NGC 3227 is a Seyfert galaxy with a bright active nucleus, and it is interacting with the nearby elliptical NGC 3226. The two form a striking pair in telescopes.
What you are looking at
NGC 3227 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 68° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 63,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about half the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus shines brightly with the light of gas falling into its central black hole. Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 94, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 209 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1983U. It is cited in 1,828 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 83 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 54 million years. When it left, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,129 km/s (2.5 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 3227 sits within the constellation Leo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 70° 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: NGC 3213 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 530,000 light-years from it); IC 610 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 740,000 light-years from it); UGC 5629 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 1,130,000 light-years from it); UGC 5675 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 1,150,000 light-years from it), and 5 more.
By apparent size it is number 241 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 30445 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABa |
| Angular diameter | 3.98′ |
| Right ascension | 10h23m30.6s |
| Declination | +19°51′53.9″ |
| Constellation | Leo |
| Inclination | 68.3° |
| Light travel time | 54 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 4.0 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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