Galaxies NGC 5468 and NGC 5472 in Virgo
Supernova 2005 P

Supernova 2005 P:

• Discovered: Jan 21, 2005, by the LOSS supernova group's Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT).
• Magnitude 18.1 at discovery.
• Type Ia pec
• The supernova measured magnitude 18.9 in the Kopernik image above taken at 5:50 UT on April 10, 2005.

Follow this Link to a NASA Web site on supernovas. It has a very nice animation and a description of what these objects are.

NGC 5468 and NGC 5472 are a pair of Spiral Galaxies in the Constellation of Virgo. They have similar red shifts and therefore they are probably close to each other, but they are not interacting.

NGC 5468: This galaxy has a small bright nucleus and perhaps a short bar. There are two thin principal arms that can be followed from the center outward, one for half a revolution and the other for a quarter revolution, before they branch into several thin fragments winding through the outer disk. The resulting arm pattern is open. Although the arms are multiple, they remain thin and do not cover a large area of the outer disk.

NGC 5472: NGC 5472 has a small, bright, elongated nucleus that is not in the center of a bright lens shaped body. It is probably an edge-on spiral galaxy.

Non-existent NGC/IC Objects in this field: NGC 5467 = IC 973 and NGC 5465 = IC 974. They are both stars south of NGC 5468, and not galaxies. They were found by Bigourdan while he was trying to recover the three "nebulae" supposedly seen by Tempel near NGC 5468. Bigourdan somehow became a bit confused by the field, so did not realize immediately that one of his "novae" (IC 973) was the same star that he took to be NGC 5467. He published it in his first "Comptes Rendus" list, so it got an IC number. He caught the erroneous identity later when he was preparing his complete observations for publication.

Using the red shift data from the “NASA Extra-galactic Data Base(NED)”, (and a Hubble Constant of 62 Km per sec., per Megaparsec), one can calculate a rough distance estimate for these galaxies of about 150 million light years. This would mean that NGC 5468 has a diameter of about 113,000 light years.

NGC 5468 Magnitude: 12.2 Constellation: Virgo RA: 14h 06m 34.9s Dec: -05° 27' 13" Epoch 2000 Size (mins): 2.6' x 2.4' Classification: SAB(rs)cd        Mixed Barred / Non-Barred Spiral Galaxy, Mixed inner ring / S-shaped Dreyer description in the NGC:        "Faint, large, round, very gradually brighter middle, near 9th magnitude star."

NGC 5472 Magnitude: 15.2 Constellation: Virgo RA: 14h 06m 55.0s Dec: -05° 27' 41" Epoch 2000 Size (mins): 1.3' x 0.3' Classification: : SA(r)ab? sp        Spiral Galaxy, Inner Ring {uncertain}, edge-on spindle shape. Dreyer description in the NGC:        "Pretty faint, very small, between 2 very faint stars."

Click below to

George Normandin, KAS

April 19th, 2005