NGC 4458 is an
elliptical galaxy located about 54 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 ...
of
Virgo. It was discovered by astronomer
William Herschel on April 12, 1784. NGC 4458 is a member of
Markarian's Chain which is part of the
Virgo Cluster. It is in a pair with the galaxy
NGC 4461. NGC 4458 and
NGC 4461 are interacting with each other.
NGC 4458 may have a
supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of 200 million Suns (
M☉
The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass of ...
).
Nuclear disk
NGC 4458 has an edge-on nuclear disk which is estimated to be about 6 billion years old. The disk likely formed from the merger of a gas-rich galaxy and has been found to have "similar properties to the decoupled cores of bright ellipticals".
[L. Morelli, C. Halliday, E. M. Corsini, A. Pizzella, D. Thomas, R. P. Saglia, R. L. Davies, R. Bender, M. Birkinshaw, F. Bertola, Nuclear stellar discs in low-luminosity elliptical galaxies: NGC 4458 and 4478, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 354, Issue 3, November 2004, Pages 753–762, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.08236.x}]
Counter-rotating core
Using Hubble images, it has been determined that NGC 4458 has a counter-rotating core.
Metallicity
NGC 4458 has a low metal content but has an overabundance of the element
iron
Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...
.
See also
*
List of NGC objects (4001–5000)
This is a list of NGC objects 4001–5000 from the New General Catalogue (NGC). The astronomical catalogue is composed mainly of star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. Other objects in the catalogue can be found in the other subpages of the list of ...
*
Messier 86
Messier 86 (also known as M86 or NGC 4406) is an elliptical or lenticular galaxy in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781. M86 lies in the heart of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies and forms a most conspicuous group ...
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:NGC 4458
Elliptical galaxies
Virgo (constellation)
4458
Virgo Cluster
41095
7610
Astronomical objects discovered in 1784