NGC 4307 — SBb in Virgo
SBb in Virgo, 3.4 arcminutes across, its light 51 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4307
What you are looking at
NGC 4307 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. 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 51,000 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 member of a group of galaxies. It is cited in 180 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 27 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 51 million years. When it left, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,059 km/s (2.4 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 4307 sits within the constellation Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 59° 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 4316 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 290,000 light-years from it); NGC 4356 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 650,000 light-years from it); NGC 4411 (1.1° away on the sky, at least 980,000 light-years from it); NGC 4411B (1.2° away on the sky, at least 1,040,000 light-years from it), and 28 more.
By apparent size it is number 370 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 40033 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBb |
| Angular diameter | 3.44′ |
| Right ascension | 12h22m05.7s |
| Declination | +09°02′37.4″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 51 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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