NGC 4571
Galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices
NGC 4571 is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation of Coma Berenices. It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on 14 January 1787. It was also observed by German astronomer Friedrich Schwassmann on 23 November 1900, causing it to be listed in the Index Catalogue as IC 3588. John Dreyer thought this galaxy might be the "lost" Messier 91, but in 1969, amateur astronomer William C. Williams realized that M91 was actually NGC 4548.
01Physical properties
The finding of Cepheids by the Canada France Hawaii Telescope in 1994 has established that this galaxy is a member of the Virgo Cluster.
Despite being classified as a late-type galaxy, NGC 4571 has features more typical of spiral galaxies of earlier Hubble type such as a high color index, both low star-formation rate and H-alpha brightness, and relatively little neutral hydrogen, suggesting it may have lost most of its gas due to interactions with Virgo's intragalactic medium and/or past interactions with other galaxies of the cluster.
The low-surface-brightness galaxy Malin 1 is located close to this object. It is totally unrelated, however, as it lies at a much higher distance.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “NGC 4571”, 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:
- Spiralling star factory (potw2543a).jpg by ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team, CC BY 4.0
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