NGC 4697

NGC 4697 (also known as Caldwell 52) is an elliptical galaxy some 40 to 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It is a member of the NGC 4697 Group, a group of galaxies also containing NGC 4731 and several generally much smaller galaxies. This group is about 55 million light-years away; it is one of the many Virgo II Groups, which form a southern extension of the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies.

The distance to NGC 4697 is not known with high precision: measurements vary from 28 to 76 million light-years. According to the NASA Extra-galactic Database, the average is about 38 million light-years; according to SIMBAD, about 50 million light-years.

The supermassive black hole at the core of NGC 4697 has a mass of $130,000,000 solar mass$ as measured from Atacama Large Millimeter Array observations of the rotation of the central gas disk.

One supernova has been observed in NGC 4697: SN 2018imd (type Ia, mag. 15.5).