Key facts
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Right ascension
- 12 19 23.21606
- Declination
- +05 ° 49 ′ 29.7000 ″
- Redshift
- 0.007 261 ± 0.000 0102
- Heliocentric radial velocity
- 2,177 ± 3 km/s
- Distance
- 95.9 ± 8.5 Mly (29.4 ± 2.6 Mpc )
- Group or cluster
- NGC 4261 group, Virgo Cluster
- Type
- E2
- Size
- ~156,600 ly (48.01 kpc ) (estimated)
- Apparent size v
- 4.17′ × 3.39′
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- elliptical galaxy
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Distance from Earth
- 19.82
- Image
- NGC 4261 imaged by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.png
Show 11 more facts
- catalog code
- GB6 J1219+0549a
- epoch
- J2000.0
- apparent magnitude
- 9.852
- declination
- 5.824916692222
- galaxy morphological type
- E-E/S0
- right ascension
- 184.846733632667
- Commons category
- NGC 4261
- discoverer or inventor
- William Herschel
- time of discovery or invention
- 1784-04-13
- redshift
- 0.007372
- radial velocity
- 2183
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
NGC 4261 is an elliptical galaxy located around 100 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on April 13, 1784. The galaxy is a member of its own somewhat meager galaxy group known as the NGC 4261 group, which is part of the Virgo Cluster.
The morphological classification of this galaxy is E2, indicating an elliptical galaxy with a 5:4 ratio between the major and minor axes. The stellar population of the galaxy is old, showing no indications of recent mergers or interactions with other members of its group. Large-scale isophotes of the galaxy are generally boxy in form, with no markers that would suggest a disruptive interaction within the last billion years. There is a dust lane along the north–south axis of the galaxy and a disk of dust around the nucleus.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “NGC 4261” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.