NGC 4527 — SABb in Virgo
SABb in Virgo, 6.3 arcminutes across, its light 83 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4527
What you are looking at
NGC 4527 is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. A weak bar of stars crosses its centre. 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 152,000 light-years, about 1.6 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a galaxy with an active nucleus, powered by its central black hole. Three supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 1915; the most recent include SN 1915A, SN 1991T, SN 2004gn. It is cited in 553 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 37 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 4527 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 1,736 km/s (3.9 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 4527 sits within the constellation Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 53° 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: NGC 4533 (0.3° away on the sky, at least 480,000 light-years from it); IC 3474 (0.4° away on the sky, at least 560,000 light-years from it); NGC 4536 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 680,000 light-years from it); UGC 7780 (0.8° away on the sky, at least 1,140,000 light-years from it), and 7 more.
By apparent size it is number 68 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 41789 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 6.29′ |
| Right ascension | 12h34m08.5s |
| Declination | +02°39′13.7″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 81.2° |
| 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 6.3 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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