NGC 3956 — SBc in Crater
SBc in Crater, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 79 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3956
What you are looking at
NGC 3956 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 78° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 80,000 light-years, about 81% of the Milky Way’s width.
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. It is cited in 97 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 23 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 3956 is light that left it about 79 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,654 km/s (3.7 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 3956 sits within the constellation Crater. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 29° 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 3981 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,150,000 light-years from it); NGC 3957 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 1,380,000 light-years from it); NGC 4027A (1.8° away on the sky, at least 2,470,000 light-years from it); NGC 4027 (1.8° away on the sky, at least 2,530,000 light-years from it), and 3 more.
By apparent size it is number 359 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 37325 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBc |
| Angular diameter | 3.46′ |
| Right ascension | 11h54m00.7s |
| Declination | -20°34′02.5″ |
| Constellation | Crater |
| Inclination | 77.5° |
| Light travel time | 79 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 3.5 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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