NGC 708 is an

elliptical galaxy An elliptical galaxy is a type of galaxy with an approximately ellipsoidal shape and a smooth, nearly featureless image. They are one of the four main classes of galaxy described by Edwin Hubble in his Hubble sequence and 1936 work ''The R ...

located 240 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 ...

Andromeda and was discovered by astronomer

William Herschel Frederick William Herschel (; german: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline H ...

on September 21, 1786. It is classified as a

cD galaxy The type-cD galaxy (also cD-type galaxy, cD galaxy) is a galaxy morphology classification, a subtype of type-D galaxy, type-D Elliptical galaxy#Sizes and shapes, giant elliptical galaxy. Characterized by a large galactic halo, halo of stars, they ...

and is the brightest member of

Abell 262 Abell 262 is a galaxy cluster in the Abell catalogue. It is part of the Perseus–Pisces Supercluster, one of the largest known structures in the universe. Although its central galaxy, NGC 708, is a giant cD galaxy, most of its bright galaxies ...

. 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 A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars. Globular clusters are bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards their centers. They can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of member ...

Dust 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 . The dust lane appears to have formed from a cooling accretion flow of intracluster medium (ICM) onto NGC 708. NGC 708 - HST- R814GB435

Supermassive black hole

NGC 708 has a

supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical obj ...

with an estimated mass of (

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 ...

) (10^8.46) . The supermassive black hole is powering the radio jets and lobes in the galaxy.

Radio morphology

NGC 708 contains two radio jets that are mildly bent and extend into ''s'' shaped double radio lobes with a total length of .

Chandra Chandra ( sa, चन्द्र, Candra, shining' or 'moon), also known as Soma ( sa, सोम), is the Hindu god of the Moon, and is associated with the night, plants and vegetation. He is one of the Navagraha (nine planets of Hinduism) and ...

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

Possible interaction

NGC 708 may be interacting with NGC 705 which lies about to the south-west.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:NGC 708

708 __NOTOC__ Year 708 ( DCCVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 708 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era b ...

6962 Andromeda (constellation) Astronomical objects discovered in 1786 Elliptical galaxies Abell 262

1348 Year 1348 ( MCCCXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar, the 1348th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 348th year of the 2nd millennium, the 48t ...