NGC 4314 — Sa in Coma Berenices
Sa in Coma Berenices, 3.7 arcminutes across, its light 47 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4314
NGC 4314 is a barred spiral with a brilliant ring of young stars close around its nucleus, one of the clearest examples of a nuclear star-forming ring. Hubble's image of the ring is a classic.
What you are looking at
NGC 4314 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. It faces us almost squarely, which shows its full structure at once. 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 LINER galaxy: its nucleus shows the faint, low-level activity of a black hole feeding slowly. It is cited in 497 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4314 is light that left it about 47 million years ago; on Earth, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 982 km/s (2.2 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 4314 sits within the constellation Coma Berenices. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 80° 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: UGC 7438 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 140,000 light-years from it); NGC 4274 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 530,000 light-years from it); NGC 4286 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 560,000 light-years from it); NGC 4310 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 570,000 light-years from it), and 10 more.
By apparent size it is number 294 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 40097 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sa |
| Angular diameter | 3.70′ |
| Right ascension | 12h22m32.0s |
| Declination | +29°53′43.6″ |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices |
| Inclination | 16.2° |
| Light travel time | 47 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 3.7 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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