M49 and her little friends (Andrew Lockwood)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: M 49 · NGC 4464 · NGC 4467 · NGC 4470 · NGC 4472 · NGC 4492

M49 and her little friends, Andrew Lockwood

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M49 and her little friends

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M49 and her little friends

This elliptical galaxy is the 49th object in the catalogue of 'things that are not comets' compiled during the 18th century by Charles Messier. Later it was given the designation NGC4472. Like most elliptical galaxies, it is huge, and is largely composed of older stars with almost no new star-forming activity and shows none of the spiral structures associated with star formation seen in younger galaxies. Instead, it is spheroidal, and the individual movements of the billions of stars in it are more or less randomly swarming around the supermassive black hole in the centre. One unusual feature that leads to it's inclusion in another interesting catalog - compiled by Harlton Arp and containing all the galaxies that are weird, is the interaction with the bluish coloured dwarf galaxy to the bottom at about 7 o'clock. Of course, this dwarf galaxy gets it's own catalogue number (UGC7636) so that it can be suitably classified and understood.

So a hierarchy of catalogues: Messier - late 1700s, NGC by Dreyer in 1880, then Arp, in the 60's, Uppsala in the 70's for all the galaxies smaller than one arc-minute, and our telescopes and cameras are still getting better.

This image is 9 hours worth of LRGB images acquired last week. The depth is limited by the hot nights and the light pollution, but at least I was able to see the dwarf galaxy. In very deep images of this area the halo of M49 can be seen to extend well past the little dwarf.

Suburban Astrophotography

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4251501
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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M49 and her little friends

M49 and her little friends

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M49 and her little friends

M49 and her little friends

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