NGC 4459 — S0 in Coma Berenices
S0 in Coma Berenices, 4.2 arcminutes across, its light 57 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4459
What you are looking at
NGC 4459 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 47° 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 69,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 71% of the Milky Way’s width.
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. It is cited in 575 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 19 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 57 million years. When it left, an asteroid had ended the age of dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,186 km/s (2.7 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 4459 lies in Coma Berenices. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 64° 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 4468 (0.1° away on the sky, at least 140,000 light-years from it); NGC 4477 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 420,000 light-years from it); NGC 4479 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 510,000 light-years from it); NGC 4516 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 1,160,000 light-years from it), and 24 more.
By apparent size it is number 211 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 41104 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0 |
| Angular diameter | 4.17′ |
| Right ascension | 12h29m00.0s |
| Declination | +13°58′42.7″ |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices |
| Inclination | 47.0° |
| Light travel time | 57 million years |
| Bar | not recorded |
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 4.2 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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