NGC 3319 — SBc in Ursa Major
SBc in Ursa Major, 3.6 arcminutes across, its light 35 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3319
What you are looking at
NGC 3319 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 steeply tilted, about 63° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 37,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a third 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. It is cited in 327 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 3319 today set out about 35 million years ago, when the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 738 km/s (1.6 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 3319 sits within the constellation Ursa Major. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 88° high in the north, close to overhead, seen from the middle of the United States.
By apparent size it is number 307 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 31671 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBc |
| Angular diameter | 3.63′ |
| Right ascension | 10h39m09.5s |
| Declination | +41°41′12.3″ |
| Constellation | Ursa Major |
| Inclination | 62.7° |
| Light travel time | 35 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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