M65 (NGC 3623) — Sa in Leo
Sa in Leo, 7.6 arcminutes across, its light 39 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About M65 (NGC 3623)
Messier 65 is one of the Leo Triplet, three galaxies close enough to fit in a single telescope view. It is a tilted spiral with tightly wound arms and a prominent dust lane, and compared with its neighbours it is relatively calm, with little new star formation.
What you are looking at
M65 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. 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 86,000 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 one of a pair of galaxies. Halton Arp included it in his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 317, a list of galaxies with unusual, disturbed shapes. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2013am. It is cited in 462 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 26 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
M65 lies in Leo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 63° 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: M66 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 230,000 light-years from it); Hamburger Galaxy (0.6° away on the sky, at least 400,000 light-years from it); NGC 3593 (1.1° away on the sky, at least 730,000 light-years from it); NGC 3666 (2.2° away on the sky, at least 1,480,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 33 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 34612 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sa |
| Angular diameter | 7.64′ |
| Right ascension | 11h18m55.9s |
| Declination | +13°05′32.3″ |
| Constellation | Leo |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| 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 7.6 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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