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Q487244
Sign in to saveAlso known as Dusty Spiral Galaxy
spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices
Key facts
- Constellation
- Coma Berenices
- Right ascension
- 12 26 27.1491
- Declination
- +31 ° 13 ′ 24.694 ″
- Redshift
- 716 ± 6 km/ s
- Distance
- 62.3 Mly
- Type
- SA(rs)c
- Size
- 82,500 ly (25.29 kpc ) (estimated)
- Apparent size v
- 3.6 ′ × 2.0 ′
via Wikipedia infobox
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
NGC 4414, also known as the Dusty Spiral Galaxy, is an unbarred spiral galaxy about 62 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on 13 March 1785. NGC 4414 is a flocculent spiral galaxy, with short segments of spiral structure but without the dramatic well-defined spiral arms of a grand design spiral. It is a member of the Coma I Group, a group of galaxies lying physically close to the Virgo Cluster.
The galaxy was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, as part of the HST's main mission to determine the distance to galaxies, and again in 1999 as part of the Hubble Heritage project. It has been part of an ongoing effort to study its Cepheid variable stars. The outer arms appear blue due to the continuing formation of young stars and include a possible luminous blue variable with an absolute magnitude of −10.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Q487244” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.