NGC 3642 — Sbc in Ursa Major
Sbc in Ursa Major, 4.3 arcminutes across, its light 76 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3642
What you are looking at
NGC 3642 is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. It is tilted about 32° to our line of sight, enough to show both the shape of its arms and the depth of its disc. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 94,000 light-years, close to the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a LINER galaxy: its nucleus shows the faint, low-level activity of a black hole feeding slowly. It is cited in 221 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 25 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 3642 is light that left it about 76 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,576 km/s (3.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 3642 sits within the constellation Ursa Major. From most of the United States it never sets: it circles the north celestial pole all year, and stands highest on spring evenings, around April.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: NGC 3619 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 1,810,000 light-years from it); NGC 3669 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 1,860,000 light-years from it); UGC 6566 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 2,580,000 light-years from it); NGC 3757 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 2,670,000 light-years from it), and 3 more.
By apparent size it is number 192 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 34889 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 4.27′ |
| Right ascension | 11h22m17.9s |
| Declination | +59°04′28.0″ |
| Constellation | Ursa Major |
| Inclination | 32.2° |
| Light travel time | 76 million years |
| Bar | not recorded |
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 4.3 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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