NGC 3396 — Sm in Leo Minor
Sm in Leo Minor, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 81 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3396
What you are looking at
NGC 3396 is a Magellanic spiral, a small, lopsided disc much like the Large Magellanic Cloud, with almost no central bulge. We see it almost exactly edge-on, so its whole disc appears as one thin band of light, with dust showing as a dark line along its length. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 73,000 light-years, about 75% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as one of a pair of galaxies. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 246 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. It is cited in 215 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 23 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 81 million years. When it left, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,694 km/s (3.8 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 3396 lies in Leo Minor. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 83° 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 3395 (1′ away on the sky, at least 30,000 light-years from it); IC 2604 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 340,000 light-years from it); NGC 3424 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 570,000 light-years from it); NGC 3430 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 680,000 light-years from it), and 5 more.
By apparent size it is number 476 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 32434 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sm |
| Angular diameter | 3.10′ |
| Right ascension | 10h49m55.1s |
| Declination | +32°59′27.0″ |
| Constellation | Leo Minor |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 81 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 3.1 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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