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NGC 708

Galaxy in the constellation Andromeda

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
1 min read
Source updated September 3, 2026
Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

NGC 708 is an elliptical galaxy located 240 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on September 21, 1786. It is classified as a cD galaxy and is the brightest member of Abell 262. NGC 708 is a weak FR I radio galaxy and is also classified as a type 2 Seyfert galaxy.

NGC 708 is surrounded by 4,700 globular clusters.

01Dust lane

Discovered in 1979 by Kotanyi et al., NGC 708 has a thin dust lane with an irregular structure. Besides the dust lane, there are also patches of dust that cross the nucleus. These features are oriented nearly perpendicular to the radio emission of the galaxy. The lane appears to be a nearly edge-on dust disk with a length of 16,000 ly (5 kpc).

The dust lane appears to have formed from a cooling accretion flow of intracluster medium (ICM) onto NGC 708.

The dust lane in NGC 708 as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 705 can be seen at the lower right of the image.
The dust lane in NGC 708 as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 705 can be seen at the lower right of the image.

02Supermassive black hole

NGC 708 has a supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of (2.9×108 M☉) (108.46) M☉.

The supermassive black hole is powering the radio jets and lobes in the galaxy.

03Radio morphology

NGC 708 contains two radio jets that are mildly bent and extend into ''s'' shaped double radio lobes with a total length of 200,000 ly (60 kpc).

Chandra observations have shown that the lobes have created a cavity in the intracluster medium of Abell 262.

04Possible interaction

NGC 708 may be interacting with NGC 705 which lies about 67,000 ly (20.6 kpc) to the south-west.

Watch videos about NGC 708Explainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “NGC 708”, 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.

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List of NGC objects (1-1000)

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