NGC 4571 — Sc in Coma Berenices
Sc in Coma Berenices, 3.6 arcminutes across, its light 16 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4571
What you are looking at
NGC 4571 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. We look down on it almost face-on, so its structure is laid out as if on a map. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 17,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about 17% of the Milky Way’s width.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a cluster of galaxies. It is cited in 373 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 31 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
Its light has been travelling for about 16 million years. When it left, grasslands were spreading across the continents. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 336 km/s (0.8 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
NGC 4571 lies in Coma Berenices. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 64° 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: M91 (0.5° away on the sky, at least 130,000 light-years from it); IC 3522 (1.1° away on the sky, at least 320,000 light-years from it); NGC 4523 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 340,000 light-years from it); NGC 4595 (1.3° away on the sky, at least 360,000 light-years from it), and 6 more.
By apparent size it is number 327 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 42100 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 3.56′ |
| Right ascension | 12h36m56.4s |
| Declination | +14°13′02.5″ |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices |
| Inclination | 22.1° |
| Light travel time | 16 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 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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