NGC 4206 — Sbc in Virgo
Sbc in Virgo, 4.7 arcminutes across, its light 34 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4206
What you are looking at
NGC 4206 is a spiral of the same broad class astronomers give the Milky Way: a moderate bulge and clearly drawn arms. 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 46,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about half the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole. It is cited in 250 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 31 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 4206 today set out about 34 million years ago, when Antarctica had begun to freeze. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 702 km/s (1.6 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 4206 sits within the constellation Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 63° 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: UGC 7249 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 160,000 light-years from it); IC 3100 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 500,000 light-years from it); NGC 4267 (1.1° away on the sky, at least 660,000 light-years from it); IC 3065 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 830,000 light-years from it), and 5 more.
By apparent size it is number 148 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 39183 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sbc |
| Angular diameter | 4.69′ |
| Right ascension | 12h15m16.8s |
| Declination | +13°01′26.1″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 34 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 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.
Take this galaxy — $1,290 Browse the Collection