Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Andromeda (And)  ·  Contains:  43 bet And  ·  Mirach  ·  NGC 404  ·  PGC 2070452  ·  PGC 3088484  ·  The star Mirach (βAnd)
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NGC 404, Gary Imm
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NGC 404

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 404, Gary Imm
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 404

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Description

This object is a dwarf lenticular galaxy located just 8 million light years away in the constellation of Andromeda at a declination of +36 degrees. The galaxy spans 7 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of only 20,000 light years. This galaxy is the nearest lenticular galaxy to us.

This galaxy lies only 8 arc-minutes away from the bright 2nd magnitude orange/yellow star Beta Andromedae, better known as Mirach. For this reason, the galaxy is sometimes called "Mirach's Ghost".

Processing this image of a galaxy located so close to a very bright star was almost an impossible task because of the bright star reflections. In fact, I decided against processing it until I saw Robert Eder's excellent Astrobin image. I then worked to fix the bright star issues, although I am not thrilled with the result. I had to make the image dark to hide the ugly artifacts. But, despite the problems, it is image of an interesting object that I did not have before, so I decided to post it anyway.

A tiny star is visible immediately adjacent to Mirach at 12 o'clock. It seems like this would be a Mirach companion, but I could not confirm that.

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