NGC 4993
Sign in to savegalaxy in the constellation of Hydra
Key facts
- Constellation
- Hydra
- Right ascension
- 13 09 47.7
- Declination
- −23 ° 23 ′ 02 ″
- Heliocentric radial velocity
- 2916 km/s
- Distance
- 44.1 Mpc (144 Mly )
- Group or cluster
- NGC 4993 Group
- Type
- (R')SAB0^-(rs)
- Size
- ~55,000 ly (17 kpc ) (estimated)
- Apparent size v
- 1.3 x 1.1
- Notable features
- Host of neutron star merger detected as gravitational wave GW170817 and gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A
via Wikipedia infobox
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Encyclopedic overview
NGC 4993 starmap near ψ Hydrae, near galaxies of NGC 4968, NGC 4970, NGC 5042, IC 4180, IC 4197 NGC 4993 (also catalogued as NGC 4994 in the New General Catalogue) is a lenticular galaxy located about 140 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra. It was discovered on 26 March 1789 by William Herschel and is a member of the NGC 4993 Group.
NGC 4993 was the site of GW170817, a collision of two neutron stars, the first astronomical event detected in both electromagnetic and gravitational radiation, a discovery given the Breakthrough of the Year award for 2017 by the journal Science. The detection of gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A simultaneous with the gravitational wave event, for example, provided the first direct confirmation that binary neutron star collisions generate short gamma-ray bursts.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “NGC 4993” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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