NGC 3447 — Sm in Leo
Sm in Leo, 3.4 arcminutes across, its light 52 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3447
What you are looking at
NGC 3447 is a Magellanic spiral, a small, lopsided disc much like the Large Magellanic Cloud, with almost no central bulge. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 64° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 51,000 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 one of a pair of galaxies. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 252 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2012ht. It is cited in 119 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 23 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 3447 today set out about 52 million years ago, when the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,086 km/s (2.4 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 3447 lies in Leo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 67° 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 3447A (2′ away on the sky, at least 20,000 light-years from it); NGC 3455 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 530,000 light-years from it); NGC 3454 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 570,000 light-years from it); NGC 3443 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 730,000 light-years from it), and 10 more.
By apparent size it is number 387 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 32694 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sm |
| Angular diameter | 3.38′ |
| Right ascension | 10h53m24.0s |
| Declination | +16°46′20.7″ |
| Constellation | Leo |
| Inclination | 64.1° |
| Light travel time | 52 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 3.4 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.
Take this galaxy — $1,290 Browse the Collection