NGC 4050 — Sab in Corvus
Sab in Corvus, 3.4 arcminutes across, its light 85 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4050
What you are looking at
NGC 4050 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. It is tilted about 54° 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 84,000 light-years, close to 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. It is cited in 84 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 13 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 4050 today set out about 85 million years ago, when dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,762 km/s (3.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 4050 sits within the constellation Corvus. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in April it stands about 34° 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 4035 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 1,060,000 light-years from it); NGC 4094 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 2,920,000 light-years from it); Antennae Galaxies (2.5° away on the sky, at least 3,690,000 light-years from it); NGC 4039 (2.5° away on the sky, at least 3,710,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 375 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 38049 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sab |
| Angular diameter | 3.42′ |
| Right ascension | 12h02m54.0s |
| Declination | -16°22′25.0″ |
| Constellation | Corvus |
| Inclination | 54.4° |
| Light travel time | 85 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 3.4 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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