NGC 4010 — SBcd in Ursa Major
SBcd in Ursa Major, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 44 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4010
What you are looking at
NGC 4010 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 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 39,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a third the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
It is cited in 167 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 14 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4010 is light that left it about 44 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 905 km/s (2.0 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 4010 sits within the constellation Ursa Major. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 83° 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 3949 (1.0° away on the sky, at least 780,000 light-years from it); NGC 3985 (1.1° away on the sky, at least 850,000 light-years from it); NGC 4096 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 960,000 light-years from it); NGC 3906 (1.9° away on the sky, at least 1,440,000 light-years from it), and 10 more.
By apparent size it is number 492 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 37697 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBcd |
| Angular diameter | 3.07′ |
| Right ascension | 11h58m37.8s |
| Declination | +47°15′40.5″ |
| Constellation | Ursa Major |
| Inclination | 82.2° |
| Light travel time | 44 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 3.1 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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