Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  NGC 4477  ·  NGC 4479  ·  PGC 41277
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NGC 4477, Gary Imm
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NGC 4477

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NGC 4477, Gary Imm
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NGC 4477

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Description

This object is a barred lenticular galaxy located 65 million light years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices at a declination of +13 degrees. This 10.4 magnitude galaxy has a surface brightness of 13.1. It spans 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to an actual diameter of 60,000 light years. The galaxy is 25 degrees from being face-on to us.

The bright small central core is embedded in a circular bulge, which in turn is embedded in the bright, almost vertical bar. The bar ends transition to a faint but distinct spiral arm feature. The most interesting aspect of this galaxy to me is the faint oval dust band which encircles the core, running from upper left to lower right. Perhaps this galaxy was the result of a long ago merger between an elliptical galaxy and a smaller spiral galaxy.

This galaxy is less than one degree from NGC 4473 and makes a good framing pair with it for shorter focal length scopes.

The barred lenticular galaxy to the lower left is NGC 4479, which is a similar distance away as NGC 4477. Although the outer disk of this galaxy is much fainter, the length, brightness and orientation of the bar is about the same.

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