NGC 3245 — S0 in Leo Minor
S0 in Leo Minor, 3.6 arcminutes across, its light 65 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3245
What you are looking at
NGC 3245 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 62° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 68,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 70% of the Milky Way’s width.
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 377 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 22 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 3245 today set out about 65 million years ago, when an asteroid had ended the age of dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,358 km/s (3.0 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
NGC 3245 lies in Leo Minor. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 79° 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 3245A (0.1° away on the sky, at least 170,000 light-years from it); NGC 3254 (1.1° away on the sky, at least 1,230,000 light-years from it); NGC 3277 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 1,400,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 317 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 30744 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0 |
| Angular diameter | 3.61′ |
| Right ascension | 10h27m18.4s |
| Declination | +28°30′26.7″ |
| Constellation | Leo Minor |
| Inclination | 61.9° |
| Light travel time | 65 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 3.6 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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