NGC 3521 — SABb in Leo
SABb in Leo, 8.3 arcminutes across, its light 39 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3521
NGC 3521 is a bright, flocculent spiral in Leo. Like the Sunflower Galaxy, its arms are broken into many short, fluffy segments rather than a few long spirals, and deep images show faint shells of stars around it, the remains of past collisions.
What you are looking at
NGC 3521 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 60° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 93,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), close to the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an emission-line galaxy: its spectrum shows the glow of gas lit by young stars. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2024aecx. It is cited in 901 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 36 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 39 million years. When it left, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 802 km/s (1.8 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 3521 lies in Leo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 50° 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: UGC 6145 (1.8° away on the sky, at least 1,230,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 25 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 33550 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 8.32′ |
| Right ascension | 11h05m48.7s |
| Declination | -00°02′05.1″ |
| Constellation | Leo |
| Inclination | 60.0° |
| Light travel time | 39 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 8.3 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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