NGC 493 — Sc in Cetus
Sc in Cetus, 3.0 arcminutes across, its light 117 million years old. Measured by HyperLEDA, photographed by Pan-STARRS1. Recorded once.
About NGC 493
What you are looking at
NGC 493 is a late-type spiral: a small central bulge and open, loosely wound arms full of young stars and star-forming gas. Its disc is steeply tilted, about 75° from face-on, so it appears as a long oval. From edge to edge its visible disc spans about 102,000 light-years, close to the width of the Milky Way.
What astronomers have recorded
SIMBAD, the reference database astronomers use, classes it as an emission-line galaxy: its spectrum shows the glow of gas lit by young stars. Three supernovae have been recorded in it, the first in 1971; the most recent include SN 1971S, SN 2016hgm, SN 2022ywf. It is cited in 134 scientific papers indexed by SIMBAD, and recorded there under 17 different catalogue designations.
When this light set out
What a telescope records of NGC 493 is light that left it about 117 million years ago; on Earth, the first flowering plants had appeared. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 2,437 km/s (5.5 million mph), carried by the expansion of the universe.
Finding it in the sky
In the sky, NGC 493 sits within the constellation Cetus. It is best placed on autumn evenings: around 9:30 pm in November it stands about 51° 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 474 (2.5° away on the sky, at least 5,120,000 light-years from it); NGC 470 (2.5° away on the sky, at least 5,150,000 light-years from it); NGC 520 (2.9° away on the sky, at least 5,910,000 light-years from it).
By apparent size it is number 518 of the 12,657 galaxies on the Galaxy Origins register.
Measurements
| Catalogue | PGC 4979 |
|---|---|
| Morphological type | Sc |
| Angular diameter | 3.01′ |
| Right ascension | 01h22m09.0s |
| Declination | +00°56′44.0″ |
| Constellation | Cetus |
| Inclination | 74.6° |
| Light travel time | 117 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 3.0 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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