NGC 4631

Spiral Galaxy NGC 4631

(= H V.42

= Caldwell 32),

type Sc

in Canes Venatici

Herring Galaxy, Whale Galaxy

Right Ascension	12 : 42.1 (h:m)
Declination	+32 : 33 (deg:m)
Distance	30,000 (kly)
Visual Brightness	9.8 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	17.0 x 3.5 (arc min)

NGC 4631 is a huge edge-on spiral galaxy, which is apparently distorted by

its small elliptical companion, NGC 4627. This pair has been included in

Arp’s Catalog of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 281. Rich field telescopes show

it in one field with its large, heavily distorted companion,

NGC 4656; this galaxy seems to have interacted

massively with NGC 4631: there’s a bridge of hydrogene gas connecting both

galaxies.

The name Herring Galaxy (or Nebula) is given in the interstellarum

Deep Sky magazine (No. 3, May-July 1995), the name “Whale Galaxy” occurs

in the Thompson & Bryan Supernova Search Charts series.

Our image was obtained by Sven Kohle and Till Credner by combining pictures

made with a 2048 x 2048 CCD camera, using B-, V-, and I-Filter, through the

1-meter telescope of the Hoher List observatory of the University of Bonn.

The image is copyrighted by the authors.

Also look at

their image gallery.

In the SAC 110 best NGC object list.

No. 64 in the RASC Finest NGC Objects list.

---

Hartmut Frommert

([email protected])

Christine Kronberg

([email protected])

Last Modification: 27 Jun 1998, 15:35 MET