NGC 262
Galaxy in constellation Andromeda
NGC 262 (also known as Markarian 348) is a Seyfert 2 spiral galaxy located 65.4 megaparsecs (213 million light-years) away in the constellation Andromeda. It was discovered on 17 September 1885 by Lewis A. Swift.
NGC 262 was tidally disturbed by the gravitational forces of smaller galaxies, which resulted in a surrounding large cloud over 10 times larger than the Milky Way. It is also a member of the NGC 315 Group (also known as LGG 14), which contains 42 galaxies, including NGC 226, NGC 243, NGC 266, NGC 311, NGC 315, NGC 338, IC 43, IC 66, and IC 69, among others.
01Properties
NGC 262 is very unusual when compared to a regular spiral galaxy of its type. Similar to Malin 1, it is surrounded by a very huge cloud of neutral hydrogen extending roughly 400 kiloparsecs (1,300,000 light-years) across, which is probably caused by the tidal stripping of smaller galaxies. As such, it has been thus described as the largest known spiral galaxy. However, the isophotal diameters of NGC 262 are much smaller with only up to 31 kiloparsecs (101,000 light-years), leaving larger isophotal diameters measured for many other spiral galaxies such as Andromeda Galaxy, Pinwheel Galaxy, UGC 2885, and NGC 6872.
The cloud has an apparent mass of approximately 50 billion solar masses (M☉) at a distance of 88 kiloparsecs (287,000 light-years) from the nucleus of NGC 262. The cloud is spiral-shaped with at least one arm, and possibly another one extending throughout the galaxy. The galaxy holds approximately 15 trillion stars.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “NGC 262”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Galaxy NGC 262 imaged by Legacy Surveys.jpg by Legacy Surveys / D. Lang (Perimeter Institute), CC BY 4.0
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