NGC 4013 — SABb in Ursa Major
SABb in Ursa Major, 4.9 arcminutes across, its light 40 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4013
NGC 4013 is an edge-on spiral whose disc is visibly warped, and deep images show a huge faint loop of stars around it, the remains of a smaller galaxy it has torn apart.
What you are looking at
NGC 4013 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. Its disc is turned almost exactly side-on to us: the galaxy appears as a narrow blade of light, and its dust as a dark seam running along it. 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 member of a group of galaxies. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1989Z. It is cited in 455 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 17 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4013 is light that left it about 40 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 836 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
In the sky, NGC 4013 sits within the constellation Ursa Major. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 86° high in the north, close to overhead, 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 4051 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 710,000 light-years from it); NGC 3938 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 730,000 light-years from it); IC 749 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 850,000 light-years from it); IC 750 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 860,000 light-years from it), and 10 more.
By apparent size it is number 133 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 37691 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 4.88′ |
| Right ascension | 11h58m31.4s |
| Declination | +43°56′48.5″ |
| Constellation | Ursa Major |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 40 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 4.9 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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