Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Virgo (Vir)  ·  Contains:  IC 3064  ·  IC 771  ·  NGC 4206  ·  NGC 4216  ·  NGC 4222
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NGC 4206, 4216 and 4222 (The Virgo Trio), Gary Imm
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NGC 4206, 4216 and 4222 (The Virgo Trio)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 4206, 4216 and 4222 (The Virgo Trio), Gary Imm
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 4206, 4216 and 4222 (The Virgo Trio)

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Description

This amazing trio of edge-on galaxies is located in the constellation of Virgo at a declination of +13 degrees.  

The central edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4216 is a magnitude 10 galaxy inclined just 1 degree off of edge-on.  It is located 50 million light years away and is 9 arc-minutes long.  It is about the size of our own Milky Way, at 130,000 light years in diameter.  Its bright bulge silhouettes the complex dust lanes nicely.

NGC 4216 is flanked by two similar edge-on galaxies, NGC 4222 and NGC 4206. It is striking and unusual to see three large edge-on spiral galaxies in the same small field of view.  The 3 galaxies show no sign of interaction in terms of star streams or disk warping, and indeed NGC 4206 (at lower right) is 10 million light years further away while NGC 4222 (at upper left) is 7 million light years further away. 

Although the trio here is not interacting, the small elliptical galaxy (LEDA 39247) just above NGC 4216 is at the same distance, so some interaction could be occurring although it is hard to definitely see any related star streams.  The tiny galaxies just to the right of the small elliptical are much further away, at about 1 billion light years distance. 

This trio of objects is nicknamed Stairway to Heaven.  The central galaxy (NGC 4216) is nicknamed the Silver Streak Galaxy and the Weaver's Shuttle, and is also one of at least 3 galaxies referred to as the Spindle Galaxy.

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This object is one of many included in both of my free astrophotography targeting tools:
- Imm Deep Sky Compendium (detailed Excel spreadsheet prioritizing 3100 targets based on time, your location, and moon location)
- Top 750 DSOs (simpler pdf tool for quickly seeing what is overhead on each night of the year)

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