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NGC 3198

galaxy

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ1103488
Source-derived summary

NGC 3198, also known as Herschel 146 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on 15 January 1788. NGC 3198 is located in the Leo Spur, which is part of the Virgo Supercluster, and is approximately 47 million light years away.

NGC 3198 was one of 18 galaxies targeted by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale, which aimed to calibrate various secondary distance indicators and determine the Hubble constant to an accuracy of 10%. The type and orientation of NGC 3198 made it suitable for these measurements. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) of the HST was used to measure the magnitudes of 52 Cepheid variables, and the resulting distance modulus corresponded to a distance of 14.5 Mpc (47 million light years).

Observations made with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope detected for the first time the presence of extraplanar gas. The extraplanar gas makes up approximately 15% of the total atomic hydrogen (HI) mass of the galaxy.

Supernovae

Two supernovae have been observed in NGC 3198:

SN 1966J (Type Ia, mag. 13) was discovered by Paul Wild on 18 December 1966.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “NGC 3198” as galaxy. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1788, 1966—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where galaxy can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as galaxy. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1103488. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1788 and 1966.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “NGC 3198”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow NGC 3198 primary sources, NGC 3198 archive and galaxy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “NGC 3198”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from NGC 3198” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.