NGC 3898 — Sab in Ursa Major
Sab in Ursa Major, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 56 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3898
What you are looking at
NGC 3898 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. It is tilted about 56° 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 57,000 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 a LINER galaxy: its nucleus shows the faint, low-level activity of a black hole feeding slowly. It is cited in 334 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 3898 today set out about 56 million years ago, when an asteroid had ended the age of dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,173 km/s (2.6 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
In the sky, NGC 3898 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: UGC 6816 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 420,000 light-years from it); NGC 3850 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 540,000 light-years from it); NGC 3913 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 740,000 light-years from it); UGC 6685 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 990,000 light-years from it), and 19 more.
By apparent size it is number 355 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 36921 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sab |
| Angular diameter | 3.47′ |
| Right ascension | 11h49m15.3s |
| Declination | +56°05′03.7″ |
| Constellation | Ursa Major |
| Inclination | 56.3° |
| Light travel time | 56 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 3.5 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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