NGC 4689 — Sc in Coma Berenices
Sc in Coma Berenices, 3.8 arcminutes across, its light 77 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 4689
What you are looking at
NGC 4689 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 42° 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 86,000 light-years, close to 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. It is cited in 425 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 77 million years. When it left, dinosaurs were at their peak. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 1,609 km/s (3.6 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
NGC 4689 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: IC 3806 (1.2° away on the sky, at least 1,590,000 light-years from it); NGC 4640 (1.9° away on the sky, at least 2,530,000 light-years from it); NGC 4746 (2.0° away on the sky, at least 2,640,000 light-years from it); NGC 4584 (2.4° away on the sky, at least 3,220,000 light-years from it), and 3 more.
By apparent size it is number 267 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 43186 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 3.82′ |
| Right ascension | 12h47m45.6s |
| Declination | +13°45′45.5″ |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices |
| Inclination | 42.5° |
| Light travel time | 77 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 3.8 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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