NGC 4045 and NGC 4045A, a pair of Spiral Galaxies in Virgo

Spiral Galaxies NGC 4045 and NGC 4045A in Virgo

Spiral Galaxies NGC 4045 & NGC 4045A; CCD image thru 20 inch
This is a 400 second exposure with an ST-6 CCD camera thru Kopernik's 20-inch F/8.1 Ritchey Chretien Cassegrain telescope. The field of view is about 5x7 arc minutes, with East at the top.

Galaxies NGC 4045 and NGC 4045A:

These galaxies in the Constellation of Virgo were previously considered to be an interacting pair, with NGC 4045A being a small lenticular galaxy. However, astronomers have found that they have very different red shifts and that NGC 4045A has characteristics more like that of an edge-on spiral galaxy. It appears that these two galaxies only lie along the same line of sight, with NGC 4045 being less than half the distance as NGC 4045A. NGC 4045 has a small and bright nucleus that oddly has the brightest H-II region in the galaxy.

The red shift of NGC 4045, and gives a distance estimate of 104 million light years, while the distance estimate for NGC 4045A is 265 million light years (for a Hubble Constant of 62 Km/sec per Mpc).

NGC 4045

Magnitude: 12.7

Constellation: Virgo

RA: 12h 02m 42.0s

Dec: +01° 58' 44" Epoch 2000

Size (mins): 2.7' x 1.9'

Classification: (R')SA?(rs)a: pec
Pseudo Outer Ring, Spiral Galaxy, mixed inner ring s-shaped, peculiar (uncertain)

NGC 4045A

Magnitude: 15.3

Constellation: Virgo

RA: 12h 02m 42.8s

Dec: +01° 57' 09" Epoch 2000

Size (mins): 0.6' x 0.4'

Classification: SA
Spiral Galaxy, (uncertain)

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George Normandin, KAS

April 7th, 2002