NGC 4261 is an elliptical galaxy located around 100 million

light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

s away in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

Virgo. It was discovered April 13, 1784 by the German-born astronomer William Herschel. The galaxy is a member of its own somewhat meager galaxy group known as the NGC 4261 group, which is part of the Virgo Cluster. The morphological classification of this galaxy is E2, indicating an elliptical galaxy with a 5:4 ratio between the major and minor axes. The stellar population of the galaxy is old, showing no indications of recent mergers or interactions with other members of its group. Large-scale isophotes of the galaxy are generally boxy in form, with no markers that would suggest a disruptive interaction within the last billion years. There is a

dust lane A dust lane consists of a relatively dense, obscuring clouds of interstellar dust, observed as a dark swath against the background of a brighter object(s), especially a galaxy. These dust lanes can usually be seen in spiral galaxies, such as th ...

along the north–south axis of the galaxy and a disk of dust around the nucleus. Two prominent jets emanating from the nucleus can be observed in the radio band. It has an active galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole at the core with a mass of . The galaxy is estimated to be about 60 thousand light-years across, and a jet emanating from it is estimated to span about 88 thousand light-years. A

Type Ia supernova A Type Ia supernova (read: "type one-A") is a type of supernova that occurs in binary systems (two stars orbiting one another) in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. The other star can be anything from a giant star to an even smaller white ...

event in this galaxy was reported on January 1, 2001. It was designated SN 2001A, marking the first supernova discovery of the year. The position of the event was west and north of the galactic nucleus. It reached magnitude 18.4 on December 15th of the previous year.

Gallery

File:NGC4261_-_radio,_HST.png, A

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versa ...

(right) image of the gas and dust disk in the active galactic nucleus of NGC 4261. Credit: HST/

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

ESA , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...

References

External links

Animation of the black hole in the center of NGC 4261
{{DEFAULTSORT:NGC 4261 Elliptical galaxies Supermassive black holes Radio galaxies Virgo Cluster Virgo (constellation) 4261 07360 39659