Alternate Names

NGC 4374

Type

Supermassive

Location

in the constellation Virgo

Finder Chart

Distance

50 million light-years (18.4 megaparsecs)

Mass

Roughly 1.5 billion times the mass of the Sun

Size

Diameter roughly equal to the size of Neptune's orbit around the Sun, making it as big as our solar system.

Discovery Methods

• Measuring the motions of gas

A black-and-white image from a ground-based telescope reveals that NGC 4697 shows something of a disk shape, even though it is classified as an elliptical galaxy. [STScI]

This document was last modified: October 24, 2005.