IC 3881 — SBc in Coma Berenices
SBc in Coma Berenices, 3.1 arcminutes across, its light 44 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About IC 3881
What you are looking at
IC 3881 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. A bar of stars runs straight across its centre, as one does across the centre of the Milky Way. 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 39,000 light-years (taking its redshift distance, which for a galaxy this near is approximate), about half the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as a member of a cluster of galaxies. It is cited in 88 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 15 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of IC 3881 is light that left it about 44 million years ago; on Earth, the planet had come through its hottest interval since the dinosaurs. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 918 km/s (2.1 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
In the sky, IC 3881 sits within the constellation Coma Berenices. It is best placed on spring evenings: around 9:30 pm in May it stands about 69° 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: UGC 8011 (2.5° away on the sky, at least 1,940,000 light-years from it); NGC 4635 (3.0° away on the sky, at least 2,280,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 493 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 43961 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | SBc |
| Angular diameter | 3.07′ |
| Right ascension | 12h54m48.6s |
| Declination | +19°10′38.9″ |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices |
| Inclination | 81.0° |
| Light travel time | 44 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 3.1 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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