Messier 58
Sign in to saveBarred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo
Key facts
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Right ascension
- 12 37 43.522
- Declination
- +11 ° 49 ′ 05.498 ″
- Heliocentric radial velocity
- 1517 ± 1 km/s
- Distance
- 21 megaparsecs (68 million light-years)
- Type
- SAB(rs)b; , LINER Sy 1.9
- Size
- 40.72 kiloparsecs (133,000 light-years), diameter; 2MASS K-band total isophote
- Apparent size v
- 5.9 ′ × 4.7 ′
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
Messier 58 (also known as M58 and NGC 4579) is an intermediate barred spiral galaxy with a weak inner ring structure located within the constellation Virgo, approximately 68 million light-years away from Earth. It was discovered by Charles Messier on April 15, 1779 and is one of four barred spiral galaxies that appear in Messier's catalogue. M58 is one of the brightest galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. From 1779 it was arguably (though unknown at that time) the farthest known astronomical object until the release of the New General Catalogue in the 1880s and even more so the publishing of redshift values in the 1920s.
Early observations