NGC 493

NGC 493, also occasionally referred to as PGC 4979 or GC 281, is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus.^[1] It is located approximately 90 million light-years from Earth and was discovered on December 20, 1786 by astronomer William Herschel.^[2] It was later also observed by his son, John Herschel. John Dreyer, creator of the New General Catalogue, described the galaxy as "very faint, large, much extended 60°" with "a little brighter middle".^[3]

NGC 493
SDSS view of NGC 493
Observation data (J2000 epoch)
Constellation	Cetus
Right ascension	01h 22m 09.54s
Declination	+00° 56′ 47.5″
Redshift	0.007799 ± 0.000017
Heliocentric radial velocity	(+2329 ± 5) km/s
Distance	90 Mly
Apparent magnitude (V)	12.2
Characteristics
Type	SAB(s)cd?
Apparent size (V)	4.3′ × 1.7′
Other designations
PGC 4979, GC 281, UGC 914, 2MASS J01220898+0056432, Z 385.84, MGC +00-04-099, IRAS 01195+0041, H 3.594, h 105

Supernovae

Three supernovae have been observed in NGC 493:

• SN 1971S (type unknown, mag. 15.5) was discovered by Luisa Pigatto on 15 November 1971.^[4][5]
• SN 2016hgm (Type II, mag. 17.9) was discovered by the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey on 19 October 2016.^[6]
• SN 2022ywf (Type Ia-02cx, mag. 19.95) was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility on 28 October 2022.^[7]

See also

• Spiral galaxy
• List of NGC objects (1–1000)