NGC 4697 (also known as Caldwell 52) is an elliptical galaxy some 40 to 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.

[3] 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.

[3] The distance to NGC 4697 is not known with high precision: measurements vary from 28 to 76 million light-years.

[2] The supermassive black hole at the core of NGC 4697 has a mass of 1.3+0.18−0.17×108 M☉ as measured from Atacama Large Millimeter Array observations of the rotation of the central gas disk.

[4] One supernova has been observed in NGC 4697: SN 2018imd (type Ia, mag.