NGC 4178 — Scd in Virgo
Scd in Virgo, 4.7 arcminutes across, its light 18 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4178
What you are looking at
NGC 4178 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 77° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 24,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a quarter the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an HII galaxy, glowing with clouds of hydrogen lit by young stars. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1963I. It is cited in 373 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 4178 today set out about 18 million years ago, when grasslands were spreading across the continents. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 375 km/s (0.8 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 4178 sits within the constellation Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 61° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
Its neighbours
It lies in the direction of the Virgo Cluster and at a matching speed, which places it among the cluster’s more than a thousand galaxies, the nearest large cluster to the Milky Way. At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: NGC 4207 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 460,000 light-years from it); IC 3100 (1.8° away on the sky, at least 560,000 light-years from it); UGC 7249 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 630,000 light-years from it); NGC 4294 (2.2° away on the sky, at least 690,000 light-years from it), and 3 more.
By apparent size it is number 150 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 38943 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Scd |
| Angular diameter | 4.66′ |
| Right ascension | 12h12m46.3s |
| Declination | +10°51′56.6″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 77.4° |
| Light travel time | 18 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 4.7 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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