NGC 3972 — SABb in Ursa Major
SABb in Ursa Major, 3.6 arcminutes across, its light 41 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 3972
What you are looking at
NGC 3972 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. 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 43,000 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 member of a group of galaxies. Two supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 2011; the most recent include SN 2011by, SN 2021acna. It is cited in 251 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 27 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 3972 is light that left it about 41 million years ago; on Earth, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 854 km/s (1.9 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 3972 lies in 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 3982 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 160,000 light-years from it); NGC 3990 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 210,000 light-years from it); NGC 3998 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 240,000 light-years from it); UGC 6894 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 480,000 light-years from it), and 12 more.
By apparent size it is number 322 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 37466 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 3.59′ |
| Right ascension | 11h55m45.1s |
| Declination | +55°19′14.6″ |
| Constellation | Ursa Major |
| Inclination | 81.1° |
| Light travel time | 41 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 3.6 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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