NGC 4526

[Bill S]

NGC 4526 has been given the strange nickname ‘The Hairy Eyebrow Galaxy’. At least it has by Stephen James O’Meara in his book Hidden Treasures. He lists it as object number 65 in this book. The galaxy is about 40 to 55 million light years away and is classified as a lenticular SAB type.

What I really liked was the two approximately magnitude 6.8 stars flanking it in an equidistant arrangement. Definitely one for the diffraction spike enthusiasts.

The galaxy in Virgo was discovered about this time of year (13 April) in 1784 by William Herschel.

Ramping up the stretch shows some fainter objects, in particular two quasars with magnitudes 19.7 and 20.3 marked in the snapshot below.

Always plenty to see in the part of the sky at this time of year.

Regards

Bill

 

 

 

[Mike JW]

Hi Bill, what a lovely image. The sort of view that when it appears on the screen I go 'wow' and sit back and enjoy it. I shall put this one onto my Virgo list.

Mike

[Martin Meredith]

Me too --  I want to know what colour those stars are! Nice catch. Virgo is so full of interesting galaxies.

Martin

[Bill S]

Martin Meredith wondered about the colours of the stars flanking the galaxy. I decided to have a look. The focus was a bit off on this LRGB snap but it does not seem to show a lot of colour. It might be better to try different (shorter) exposures when looking for colours to avoid saturation.

Checking the reference data for these stars, what I saw was not unreasonable. The left hand one is HD109417 and is class K0 so a bit more orange than our sun but as a K0 it's only just in the K class over the border from the G class. The right hand star is HD109285 and is class G5 (so in the middle of the G class  , like the sun). The two stars are a similar vanilla colour.

Bill

 

[Mike JW]

Interesting to experiment. Mike