NGC 4030 — Sbc in Virgo
Sbc in Virgo, 3.8 arcminutes across, its light 70 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4030
What you are looking at
NGC 4030 is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. It is tilted about 47° 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 78,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 79% 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. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2007aa. It is cited in 368 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 32 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 4030 today set out about 70 million years ago, when dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,462 km/s (3.3 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 4030 sits within the constellation Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 49° 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: UGC 6978 (1.5° away on the sky, at least 1,860,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 269 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 37845 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 3.81′ |
| Right ascension | 12h00m23.6s |
| Declination | -01°06′00.3″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 47.0° |
| Light travel time | 70 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 3.8 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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