About NGC 3344
Description
NGC 3344 is a small but striking face-on barred ring spiral in Leo Minor, about 25 million light-years away. Its tidy structure — a compact bar, an inner ring of star formation, and an outer pseudo-ring of more loosely wound spiral arm material — makes it a textbook example of how a stellar bar can shepherd gas into resonance rings inside a disk. The galaxy is small (about 7 arcminutes across) but well presented, with a bright nucleus and clean, low-extinction surroundings. At magnitude 9.9 it is one of the brightest galaxies in Leo Minor.
Observing Tips
A 4-inch at moderate power shows a small round glow with a stellar nucleus. An 8-inch at 150-200x reveals the bar as a slightly elongated central feature within a faint round halo. A 12-inch under good skies begins to suggest the inner ring as a brightening offset from the centre, but the outer arms are essentially photographic. Star-hop from Beta Leonis Minoris about 4 degrees northwest. Best observed February through May.
History
Discovered by William Herschel on 6 April 1785. NGC 3344 has been a recurring case study in dynamical simulations of barred ring galaxies because its rings are unusually well separated and easy to resolve in observations, providing clean targets for theoretical comparison.
Fun Facts
Spectroscopic observations have revealed that NGC 3344's outer disk contains stars rotating in the opposite direction to the inner bar — a sign that the galaxy accreted gas in counter-rotating orbits at some point in its history. This kind of retrograde accretion is rare and gives NGC 3344 a special place in studies of galaxy assembly.
Observe
1Properties
Position & Identifiers
2How easy to spot?
| Telescope | Bortle 3 | Bortle 4 | Bortle 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 80 mm refractor 80mm refr. | V. hard+ | V. hard | Imp. |
| 150 mm Newton 150mm Newt. | Hard | Hard | V. hard+ |
| Celestron C8 (203 mm SCT) C8 203mm | Hard | Hard | Hard |
Bortle 3 = rural · 4 = outer suburbs · 5 = suburbs
3Visibility
Set a location in User Settings to see visibility data.
4
Eyepiece View
5
Best Magnification
Explore
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Surface Brightness
7
Morphology Decoder
8
Inclination & True Shape
9
Redshift
10
Size Comparator
Discover
11
Light Travel Time Machine
12
Relativistic Travel
Nearby in the Sky
Other targets within a few degrees — pan your scope a little and keep exploring.
Visibility scores assume a 150 mm Newton at Bortle 4.
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