Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Canes Venatici (CVn)  ·  Contains:  NGC 4627  ·  NGC 4631  ·  NGC 4656  ·  NGC 4657  ·  Whale Galaxy
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The Hockey Stick (NGC 4656) and Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631), Drew Evans
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The Hockey Stick (NGC 4656) and Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The Hockey Stick (NGC 4656) and Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631), Drew Evans
Powered byPixInsight

The Hockey Stick (NGC 4656) and Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631)

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Description

Here is the beautiful pair of the Hockey Stick (NGC 4656) and Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631) in the constellation Canes Venatici. There are dozens of other more distant galaxies in the background that were too faint to plate solve.

The smaller “Hockey Stick Galaxy” on the left is mainly blue because of the large amount of young blue stars. Typically, abundance of star birth activity indicates some violent event, which triggered the condensation of gas clouds into proto-stars, which lead to occurrence of many new young stars. Such event is very often merger of two galaxies and the slightly irregular shape of NGC4656 and also streams of stars reaching far from the galaxy spiral arms hint such merger occurred only recently.

The larger Whale Galaxy at right is probably rather typical spiral galaxy, but visible from the side. It shows a yellow and orange central bulge, composed mainly of old stars, as well as dark interstellar dust lanes and dark reddish hydrogen clouds around the galaxy disk. Light blue portions indicate presence of many bright, young blue stars consuming the outer arms.

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The Hockey Stick (NGC 4656) and Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631), Drew Evans