Whirling
64. disc of NGC 4526
This neat little galaxy is known as NGC 4526. Its dark lanes of dust and bright diffuse glow make
the galaxy appear to hang like a halo in the emptiness of space in this image from Hubble.
Although this image paints a picture of serenity, the galaxy is anything but. It is one of the
brightest lenticular galaxies known, a category that lies somewhere between spirals and
ellipticals. It has hosted two known supernova explosions, one in 1969 and another in 1994, and
is known to have a colossal supermassive black hole at its centre that has the mass of 450 million
Suns.
NGC 4526 is part of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Ground-based observations of galaxies in this
cluster have revealed that a quarter of these galaxies seem to have rapidly rotating discs of gas
at their centres. The most spectacular of these is this galaxy, NGC 4526, whose spinning disc of
gas, dust, and stars reaches out uniquely far from its heart, spanning some 7% of the galaxy’s
entire radius.
This disc is moving incredibly fast, spinning at more than 250 kilometres per second. The dynamics
of this quickly whirling region were actually used to infer the mass of NGC 4526’s central black
hole — a technique that had not been used before to constrain a galaxy’s central black hole.
This image was taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
“It’s the sharpness, depth, and details in the images. So much better
than anything ever taken from the ground.”
— Dr. Bradley M. Peterson & Dr. Gisella De Rosa
Professor and Chair of Astronomy
Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Visiting Astronomer
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland