Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038) — SBm in Corvus
The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038) as a framed fine art print. SBm in Corvus, 5.4 arcminutes across, its light 78 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA…
About Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038)
The Antennae Galaxies are two spiral galaxies in the middle of a collision. Two long tails of stars, flung out by the encounter, give the pair its insect-like name. Where the galaxies meet, the collision has set off a burst of star formation that has created thousands of new star clusters, and the Antennae are one of the nearest and best-studied examples of what will one day happen to the Milky Way and Andromeda.
What you are looking at
NGC 4038 is a Magellanic spiral, a small, lopsided disc much like the Large Magellanic Cloud, with almost no central bulge. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. It is tilted about 52° 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 123,000 light-years, about 1.3 times the width of the Milky Way.
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. Patrick Moore listed it as Caldwell 60 in his 1995 catalogue of the finest deep-sky objects for amateur observers. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 245 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. Three supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 1974; the most recent include SN 1974E, SN 2004gt, SN 2013dk. It is cited in 1,371 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4038 is light that left it about 78 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,634 km/s (3.7 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 4038 sits within the constellation Corvus. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 31° 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 4039 (1′ away on the sky, at least 30,000 light-years from it); NGC 4027 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 940,000 light-years from it); NGC 4027A (0.7° away on the sky, at least 1,000,000 light-years from it); NGC 3981 (1.7° away on the sky, at least 2,330,000 light-years from it), and 4 more.
By apparent size it is number 101 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 37967 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBm |
| Angular diameter | 5.42′ |
| Right ascension | 12h01m53.0s |
| Declination | -18°52′05.6″ |
| Constellation | Corvus |
| Inclination | 51.9° |
| Light travel time | 78 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 5.4 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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