NGC 4442 — S0 in Virgo
S0 in Virgo, 4.3 arcminutes across, its light 26 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4442
What you are looking at
NGC 4442 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. We see it almost exactly edge-on, so its whole disc appears as one thin band of light, with dust showing as a dark line along its length. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 32,000 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. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 2021qvv. It is cited in 303 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 17 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 4442 today set out about 26 million years ago, when Antarctica had begun to freeze. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 532 km/s (1.2 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 4442 lies in Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 60° 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 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 170,000 light-years from it); NGC 4417 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 170,000 light-years from it); NGC 4424 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 200,000 light-years from it); NGC 4451 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 250,000 light-years from it), and 11 more.
By apparent size it is number 185 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 40950 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0 |
| Angular diameter | 4.32′ |
| Right ascension | 12h28m03.9s |
| Declination | +09°48′13.3″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 26 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 4.3 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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