NGC 4435 — S0 in Virgo
S0 in Virgo, 3.0 arcminutes across, its light 39 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4435
What you are looking at
NGC 4435 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. It is tilted about 54° to our line of sight, enough to show both the shape of its arms and the depth of its disc. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 34,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about a third 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 478 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 26 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4435 is light that left it about 39 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 803 km/s (1.8 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 4435 lies in Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 63° 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 3393 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 200,000 light-years from it); NGC 4436 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 510,000 light-years from it); NGC 4440 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 530,000 light-years from it); NGC 4431 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 530,000 light-years from it), and 19 more.
By apparent size it is number 505 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 40898 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0 |
| Angular diameter | 3.03′ |
| Right ascension | 12h27m40.5s |
| Declination | +13°04′43.8″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 53.6° |
| Light travel time | 39 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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