Irregular Galaxies

Click icon to view the only irregular galaxy in Messier’s catalog,

M82.

The icon shows Large Magellanic Cloud,

a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way and a member of

the Local Group.

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Irregular galaxies are those which do not match the standard Hubble scheme

of elliptical, spiral and lenticular galaxies.

There’s only one irregular galaxy in Messier’s catalog:

M82, and this one is a distorted disk galaxy.

The distortion is due to gravitational interaction with its larger and

more massive neighbor M81.

Another, very similar example is at least mentioned in Messier’s catalog,

though it did not get a number on its own:

NGC 5195, the companion of the Whirlpool

galaxy M51, which had been discovered by Pierre

Mechain. The only further irregular galaxies

known to 1782 are the

Large and the

Small Magellanic Cloud; these are probably

miniature disk galaxies in mutual gravitational interaction, and in interaction

with out Milky Way.

• Look at Irregular Galaxies in Messier’s Catalog
• Also look at our collection of some

  significant irregular and peculiar galaxies not in Messier’s catalog

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Spiral

Lenticular

Elliptical

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Hartmut Frommert

([email protected])

Christine Kronberg

([email protected])

Last Modification: 25 Jan 1998, 16:10 MET