Right ascension 12 59 35.709 Redshift 0.23937 Type cD, Ei, E0 Constellation Coma Berenices | Declination +27° 57′ 33.80″ Distance 109 Mpc (360 Mly) Magnitude 12.7 Apparent magnitude (V) 12.7 | |
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Similar NGC 4889, Coma Cluster, NGC 4881, NGC 4911, NGC 4921 | ||
NGC 4874 (Coma A) is a supergiant elliptical galaxy. It was discovered by the British astronomer Frederick William Herschel I in 1785, who catalogued it as a bright patch of nebulous feature. The second-brightest galaxy within the northern Coma Cluster, it is located at a distance of 109 megaparsecs (350,000,000 light-years) from Earth. Unlike a disc-shaped spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, NGC 4874 has no extensive dust lanes or spiral arms and has a smooth, featureless, ball-shaped profile that diminishes in luminosity with distance from the center. The galaxy is surrounded by an immense stellar halo that extends up to one million light-years in diameter. It is also enveloped by a huge cloud of interstellar medium that is currently being heated by action of infalling material from its central supermassive black hole. A jet of highly energetic plasma extends out to 1,700 light-years from its center.