NGC 4496A — Scd in Virgo
Scd in Virgo, 3.4 arcminutes across, its light 83 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4496A
What you are looking at
NGC 4496A is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. It is tilted about 38° 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 81,000 light-years, about 83% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as one of a pair of galaxies. Boris Vorontsov-Velyaminov listed it as VV 76 in his catalogue of interacting galaxies. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1960F. It is cited in 382 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 29 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4496A is light that left it about 83 million years ago; on Earth, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,730 km/s (3.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 4496A sits within the constellation Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 54° high in the south, seen from the middle of the United States.
Its neighbours
At almost the same distance from us, and so its neighbours in space as well as on the sky: IC 3474 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 1,880,000 light-years from it); UGC 7612 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 2,000,000 light-years from it); NGC 4527 (1.4° away on the sky, at least 2,060,000 light-years from it); UGC 7522 (1.5° away on the sky, at least 2,180,000 light-years from it), and 11 more.
By apparent size it is number 389 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 41471 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Scd |
| Angular diameter | 3.37′ |
| Right ascension | 12h31m39.3s |
| Declination | +03°56′22.6″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 38.5° |
| Light travel time | 83 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 3.4 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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