NGC 4424 — Sa in Virgo
Sa in Virgo, 3.0 arcminutes across, its light 21 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4424
What you are looking at
NGC 4424 is an early-type spiral: a large, bright central bulge wrapped in smooth, tightly wound arms. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 64° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 19,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a fifth the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an HII galaxy, glowing with clouds of hydrogen lit by young stars. Two supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 1895; the most recent include SN 1895A, SN 2012cg. It is cited in 417 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 33 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 4424 today set out about 21 million years ago, when grasslands were spreading across the continents. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 441 km/s (1.0 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
In the sky, NGC 4424 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 4445 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 100,000 light-years from it); NGC 4442 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 160,000 light-years from it); UGC 7596 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 320,000 light-years from it); NGC 4469 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 320,000 light-years from it), and 12 more.
By apparent size it is number 501 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 40809 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sa |
| Angular diameter | 3.04′ |
| Right ascension | 12h27m11.7s |
| Declination | +09°25′13.6″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 64.5° |
| Light travel time | 21 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 3.0 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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