Fornax dwarf galaxy

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Galaxy
Fornax dwarf galaxy
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Fornax Dwarf GALEX WikiSky.jpg
Image of the Fornax dwarf galaxy
AladinLite
Constellation Chemical furnace
Position
equinox :  J2000.0 , epoch : J2000.0
Right ascension 02 h 39 m 59 s
declination -34 ° 26 ′ 57 ″
Appearance
Morphological type dE2  
Brightness  (visual) +9.3 mag
Physical data
Affiliation Local group  
Redshift (1.63 ± 0.30)  ·  10 −4  
Radial velocity (49 ± 9) km / s  
distance 450,000  ly  
history
discovery Harlow Shapley
Discovery date 1938
Catalog names
PGC  10093 • ESO  356-04 • MCG  -06-07-001 •

The Fornax dwarf galaxy (catalog designations ESO 356-04 and MCG -06-07-001 ) is a small elliptical galaxy ( type dE2) in the constellation Fornax (Fornax). It belongs to the Local Group and is one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way .

properties

The Fornax dwarf galaxy is only 450,000 light years away and has a magnitude of +9.3 mag. Because of its very low surface brightness , the Fornax dwarf galaxy was only discovered on photographic plates by Harlow Shapley in 1938 . To do this, he used a 24-inch reflector telescope at the Boyden Observatory in South Africa . Although the dwarf galaxy in the night sky has twice the diameter of the full moon , i.e. a width of about 1 degree, it cannot be visually observed with the telescope. It only becomes visible in long-exposure photographs .

The dwarf galaxy contains six globular clusters . The largest of these, NGC 1049 , was discovered before the galaxy itself.

A significant number of Fornax's stars are older than 10 billion years ; in an epoch 3–4 billion years ago there was another strong star formation .

gallery

  • A 2009 image by NASA of the Fornax dwarf galaxy

  • A 2010 image from ESO Digitized Sky Survey 2

Web links

Commons : Constellation Chemical Furnace  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b SIMBAD Database .
  2. ↑ a b c SEDS .
  3. ^ Coleman, Matthew G .; de Jong, Jelte TA: A Deep Survey of the Fornax dSph. I. Star Formation History , bibcode : 2008ApJ ... 685..933C .