NGC 4242 — Sd in Canes Venatici
Sd in Canes Venatici, 3.8 arcminutes across, its light 25 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4242
What you are looking at
NGC 4242 is a loose spiral with almost no central bulge; its arms are patchy and ragged, and rich in gas. 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 27,000 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 a member of a group of galaxies. It is cited in 294 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 14 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 4242 today set out about 25 million years ago, when Antarctica had begun to freeze. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 516 km/s (1.2 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 4242 sits within the constellation Canes Venatici. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 84° high in the north, close to overhead, 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 7301 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 210,000 light-years from it); UGC 7391 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 240,000 light-years from it); UGC 7408 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 300,000 light-years from it); NGC 4288 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 380,000 light-years from it), and 12 more.
By apparent size it is number 273 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 39423 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sd |
| Angular diameter | 3.80′ |
| Right ascension | 12h17m30.2s |
| Declination | +45°37′09.1″ |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici |
| Inclination | 51.5° |
| Light travel time | 25 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 3.8 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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