NGC 185 - Galaxy
NGC 185 is an elliptical dwarf galaxy of Hubble- Type "dE3", which is located in a distance of about 2.1 million light years in the constellation
Cassiopeia. Because of its large apparent brightness of 9.3mag it was already discovered in 1789 by F.W. Herschel with his 19" telescope.
The dwarf galaxy is gravitationally bound to the large Andromeda galaxy "Messier 31" and has a long axis of 9,700 light years. Its absolute
magnitude is about M= -15.8mag, which corresponds to a luminosity of 130 million suns. The mass is given with 300 million solar masses.
Due to the large distance the brightest stars in NGC 185 reach just an apparent magnitude of 19.5mag. During the last years, 150 RR- Lyrae
stars have been discovered in the halo - with their light changes the distance could be more precisely determined.
In contrast to most other elliptical galaxies new young stars are still forming in NGC 185, but only in the innermost 90x150 parsecs and also
only with a very low rate of 6.6*10e-4 solar masses per year - so every 1500 years a new star like our sun is born. That's why in this galaxy
some young star clusters and a HII region in the central region can be observed. Also a supernova remnant is known.
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In my 20 inch f/3 Dobson NGC 185 appears quite bright and is much easier to observe than the neighboring NGC 147. The galaxy appears
almost roundish. The brightness of the halo increases sharply toward the middle, and a fainter, nearly stellar nucleus is found directly in the
center. The surrounding area is rich in bright and faint stars, which looks very nice.
