NGC 4461 — S0-a in Virgo
S0-a in Virgo, 3.6 arcminutes across, its light 92 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4461
What you are looking at
NGC 4461 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. Its disc is turned almost exactly side-on to us: the galaxy appears as a narrow blade of light, and its dust as a dark seam running along it. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 97,000 light-years, close to 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 251 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 20 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4461 is light that left it about 92 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,925 km/s (4.3 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 4461 sits within the constellation 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: NGC 4425 (0.6° away on the sky, at least 1,020,000 light-years from it); NGC 4476 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 1,390,000 light-years from it); NGC 4474 (0.9° away on the sky, at least 1,460,000 light-years from it); NGC 4305 (1.8° away on the sky, at least 2,830,000 light-years from it), and 8 more.
By apparent size it is number 318 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 41111 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | S0-a |
| Angular diameter | 3.61′ |
| Right ascension | 12h29m03.0s |
| Declination | +13°11′01.8″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 92 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 3.6 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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