Spiral galaxy NGC 4569 = M90


The smooth-armed spiral galaxy NGC 4569 (Messier 90) in the core of the Virgo galaxy cluster, shown in a three-color reconstruction from BVR CCD frames taken with the 1.1-meter Hall telescope at Lowell Observatory. The bright unresolved nucleus is especially prominent; it shows spectral features indicating a fading burst of star formation, one seen during a short time when the visible light is dominated by a small number of supergiant stars. The nucleus looks so starlike that it has at times been taken to be a foreground star and ignored during measurements of the galaxy's redshift (actually blueshift in this case, since NGC 4569 is orbiting rapidly enough within Virgo to overcome the Hubble velocity we would normally observe).

The spiral structure is better shown in this logarithmically-scaled visualization of the same data


Messier gallery | Galaxies | Image gallery | UA Astronomy | Bill Keel's home page


wkeel@ua.edu
Last changes: 9/2018      © 2001-2018