Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565) — Sb in Coma Berenices
The Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565) as a framed fine art print. Sb in Coma Berenices, 16.7 arcminutes across, its light 59 million years old. Measured by…
About Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565)
The Needle Galaxy is the classic edge-on spiral: we see its disc exactly side-on, so the whole galaxy appears as a long, thin blade of light split down its length by a dark lane of dust. The bulge at its centre swells out of the disc like the hub of a wheel seen from the side. It was first recorded by William Herschel in 1785, and it remains one of the most photographed galaxies in amateur astronomy because its shape is unmistakable even in a modest telescope.
What you are looking at
The Needle Galaxy is a spiral with a sizeable central bulge and well-defined arms, close in type to the Milky Way. We see it almost exactly edge-on, so its whole disc appears as one thin band of light, with dust showing as a dark line along its length. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 287,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 2.9 times the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a Seyfert galaxy: its nucleus is lit by gas falling into its central black hole, though dust hides part of that glow from us. Patrick Moore listed it as Caldwell 38 in his 1995 catalogue of the finest deep-sky objects for amateur observers. It is cited in 1,006 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 41 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of the Needle Galaxy is light that left it about 59 million years ago; on Earth, an asteroid had ended the age of dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,226 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
The Needle Galaxy lies in Coma Berenices. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 76° 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 4562 (0.2° away on the sky, at least 230,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 2 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 42038 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sb |
| Angular diameter | 16.75′ |
| Right ascension | 12h36m20.8s |
| Declination | +25°59′15.1″ |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices |
| Inclination | 90.0° |
| Light travel time | 59 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 16.7 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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