NGC 4371 — S0-a in Virgo
S0-a in Virgo, 3.9 arcminutes across, its light 44 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4371
What you are looking at
NGC 4371 is a lenticular galaxy: a disc galaxy that has largely used up the gas it needs to form new stars, so its disc is smooth and has no spiral arms. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 79° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 50,000 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 352 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 18 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4371 is light that left it about 44 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 913 km/s (2.0 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
NGC 4371 lies in Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 62° 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: IC 3356 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 380,000 light-years from it); NGC 4431 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 650,000 light-years from it); NGC 4429 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 660,000 light-years from it); NGC 4436 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 700,000 light-years from it), and 20 more.
By apparent size it is number 257 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 40442 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0-a |
| Angular diameter | 3.88′ |
| Right ascension | 12h24m55.4s |
| Declination | +11°42′15.2″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 79.3° |
| Light travel time | 44 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 3.9 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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