NGC 4536 — SABb in Virgo
SABb in Virgo, 7.1 arcminutes across, its light 87 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4536
NGC 4536 is a spiral in Virgo in which Hubble measured pulsating Cepheid stars, making it one of the galaxies used to calibrate supernovae as distance markers.
What you are looking at
NGC 4536 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 steeply tilted, about 73° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 178,000 light-years, about 1.8 times the width of the Milky Way.
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. One supernova has been recorded in it: SN 1981B. It is cited in 929 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 35 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
The light that reaches us from NGC 4536 today set out about 87 million years ago, when dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,807 km/s (4.0 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 4536 sits within the constellation Virgo. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 52° 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 (0.1° away on the sky, at least 210,000 light-years from it); NGC 4527 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 710,000 light-years from it); IC 3474 (0.7° away on the sky, at least 1,000,000 light-years from it); UGC 7612 (1.5° away on the sky, at least 2,190,000 light-years from it), and 6 more.
By apparent size it is number 42 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 41823 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SABb |
| Angular diameter | 7.08′ |
| Right ascension | 12h34m27.1s |
| Declination | +02°11′16.6″ |
| Constellation | Virgo |
| Inclination | 73.1° |
| Light travel time | 87 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 7.1 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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