NGC 4394 — SBb in Coma Berenices
SBb in Coma Berenices, 3.5 arcminutes across, its light 44 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4394
What you are looking at
NGC 4394 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. We look down on it almost face-on, so its structure is laid out as if on a map. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 45,000 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 one of a pair of galaxies. It is cited in 381 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 26 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 4394 today set out about 44 million years ago, when the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 915 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 4394 lies in Coma Berenices. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 68° 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: M85 (0.1° away on the sky, at least 100,000 light-years from it); IC 3292 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 200,000 light-years from it); NGC 4344 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 670,000 light-years from it); NGC 4293 (1.1° away on the sky, at least 870,000 light-years from it), and 6 more.
By apparent size it is number 347 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 40614 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBb |
| Angular diameter | 3.49′ |
| Right ascension | 12h25m55.6s |
| Declination | +18°12′50.8″ |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices |
| Inclination | 17.6° |
| 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 3.5 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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