M100 (NGC 4321) — SABb in Coma Berenices
SABb in Coma Berenices, 6.1 arcminutes across, its light 76 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About M100 (NGC 4321)
Messier 100 is one of the brightest spirals in the Virgo Cluster and one of the finest face-on spirals in the sky. Hubble measured pulsating Cepheid stars in it in the 1990s to fix the distance to the Virgo Cluster, part of the project that pinned down how fast the universe is expanding.
What you are looking at
M100 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. It faces us almost squarely, which shows its full structure at once. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 134,000 light-years, about 1.4 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a galaxy with an active nucleus, powered by its central black hole. Eight supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 1901; the most recent include SN 2006X, SN 2019ehk, SN 2020oi. It is cited in 1,985 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 50 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 76 million years. When it left, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,574 km/s (3.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, M100 sits within the constellation Coma Berenices. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 66° 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 4322 (5′ away on the sky, at least 120,000 light-years from it); IC 783 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 410,000 light-years from it); NGC 4405 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,120,000 light-years from it); NGC 4383 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 1,160,000 light-years from it), and 14 more.
By apparent size it is number 76 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 40153 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 6.09′ |
| Right ascension | 12h22m54.9s |
| Declination | +15°49′20.1″ |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices |
| Inclination | 24.0° |
| Light travel time | 76 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 6.1 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