NGC 3312 — Sb in Hydra
Sb in Hydra, 3.3 arcminutes across, its light 137 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3312
What you are looking at
NGC 3312 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 78° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 131,000 light-years, about 1.3 times the width of the Milky Way.
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 125 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 30 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 137 million years. When it left, the first birds had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,857 km/s (6.4 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 3312 sits within the constellation Hydra. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 22° 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 3314A (0.1° away on the sky, at least 300,000 light-years from it); NGC 3285B (0.5° away on the sky, at least 1,290,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 416 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 31513 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 3.31′ |
| Right ascension | 10h37m02.5s |
| Declination | -27°33′53.8″ |
| Constellation | Hydra |
| Inclination | 78.4° |
| Light travel time | 137 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 3.3 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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