NGC 4030

NGC 4030, a grand design spiral galaxy, lies roughly 64 million light-years away in Virgo. It belongs to the NGC 4030 Group, itself part of the Virgo II Groups—a chain of galaxies and clusters extending from the southern edge of the Virgo Supercluster. With an apparent visual magnitude of 10.6, a small telescope can spot it as a 3‑arcminute-wide patch, located about 4.75° southeast of the star Beta Virginis. The galaxy is tilted 47.1° relative to Earth’s line of sight and moves away at 1,465 km/s.

In the De Vaucouleurs system, its morphological classification is SA(s)bc: a spiral without a bar (SA), no ring structure (s), and arms that are moderately to loosely wound (bc). Near the center, the galaxy displays a complex tangle of multiple spiral arms; beyond 49″ from the core, this resolves into a symmetric, two‑arm pattern. The central bulge is relatively young, estimated at two billion years old, and the nucleus shows no signs of activity.

A supernova, designated SN 2007aa, was discovered in NGC 4030 on February 19, 2007, using the 1‑meter Swope telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Classified as Type IIP, it lay 68″.5 north and 60″.8 east of the galactic nucleus. Its progenitor was a red giant star with a mass between 8.5 and 16.5 times that of the Sun.