NGC 185

RA:

00 : 39.0

Dec:

+84 : 20

Type:

dE3 pec

RV:

+ 39 km/s

Distance:

2300 kly

Apparent Dimension:

14.5 x 12.5 arc min

Diameter:

9700 ly

Brightness:

9.2 m_vis

Abs. Mag:

- 15.8 Mag vis

Mass:

• Pretty bright, very large, irregularly round, very gradually much brighter to the middle, resolvable, 5 or 6 [arc min] diameter (1789)
• Pretty bright; large; round; gradually brighter to the middle; full 60" diameter (1833)
• Pretty bright; very large; irregularly round; very gradually much brighter to the middle; barely resolvable [mottled] (1864)

NGC 185 was recognized as a Local Group member galaxy, together with its neighbor NGC 147, by Walter Baade (1944), when he resolved them into stars with the 100-inch reflector on Mt. Wilson. These two dwarf elliptical galaxies apparently form a physical pair, as they are only 58 arc minutes separated; according to Van den Bergh, they are probably gravitationally bound in a physical pair. Both are more remote satellite galaxies of the Andromeda Galaxy M31, but are at a somewhat closer distance to us these times. Modern distance estimates for NGC 185, adjusted for the scale we use here, correspond to some 2.3 million light-years.

The image in this page was obtained by astronomers of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on La Palma, under the leadership of D. Martínez-Delgado, in 1999. It is a combination of B, V, and R images from the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope. From this image, evidence was found that NGC 185 actually contains young stellar clusters, which had been thought to be luminous, blue stars, by their discoverer Walter Baade. According to research of these images, star formation proceeded at a low rate until the recent past, the age of the most recent traces of star formation activity detected in the galaxy being some 100 million years. These conclusions rule out the possibility of NGC 185 being an old galaxy formed by Population II stars only.