NGC 49 - Galaxy Group
The galaxy group around NGC 49 is located at a distance of about 240 million light years in the constellation Andromeda. It consists of 3 galaxies of the NGC
catalog (48/49/51) and three galaxies of the IC catalog (1534/1535/1536), which are each arranged in a row. The discovery of the three NGC- galaxies was made
in 1885 by Lewis A. Swift, the IC galaxies were found three years later by Edward Barnard.
The brightest galaxy is NGC 51 with an apparent magnitude of 13.2mag. With a diameter of 95.000 lightyears it is just a little smaller than our own Milky Way
and with a luminosity of 24 billion suns (M=-21.1mag) it shines as bright as it. NGC 51 belongs to the lenticular galaxies of Hubble Type S0 and has an active
core. All other galaxies have diameters from 50,000 to 90,000 light years and are less exciting.
By the way, NGC 48 does not belong to the group physically, because in contrast to the other five galaxies it is only 88 million lightyears away from Earth and
is therefore a foreground object.
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In my 20" telescope the group offers a nice sight. All 6 galaxies are easily visible with averted vision at a magnification of 270x. In NGC 49 a brighter stellar core
can be seen in the center. Five of the galaxies appear slightly oval, only IC 1535 is slightly elongated with an elongation of 3:1.
