NGC 4214

NGC 4214 is a dwarf barred irregular galaxy located around 10 million light-years^[2] away in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered on 28 April 1785 by German-British astronomer William Herschel.^[3] NGC 4214 is a member of the M94 Group.

NGC 4214
NGC 4214 in Optical and near-infrared, imaged by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3
Observation data (J2000 epoch)
Constellation	Canes Venatici
Right ascension	12h 15m 39.17s[1]
Declination	+36° 19′ 36.8″[1]
Redshift	0.000971[1]
Heliocentric radial velocity	291±1 km/s[1]
Distance	9.72 ± 0.82 Mly (2.979 ± 0.252 Mpc)[1]
Apparent magnitude (V)	10.2[1]
Characteristics
Type	IAB(s)m[1]
Size	~31,100 ly (9.53 kpc) (estimated)[1]
Apparent size (V)	8.4′ × 6.6′[1]
Other designations
KUG 1213+366, IRAS 12131+3636, NGC 4228, UGC 7278, MCG 6-27-42, PGC 39225, CGCG 187-32[1]

Characteristics

Amateur image of NGC 4214

NGC 4214 is both larger and brighter than the Small Magellanic Cloud^[4] as well as a starburst galaxy, with the largest star-forming regions (NGC 4214-I and NGC 4214-II) in the galaxy's center. Of the two, NGC 4214-I contains a super star cluster rich in Wolf–Rayet stars and NGC 4214-II is younger (age less than 3 million years), including a number of star clusters and stellar associations.^[5]

NGC 4214 also has two older super star clusters, both with an age of 200 million years and respective masses of 2.6×10⁵ and 1.5×10⁶ solar masses.^[6]

Two satellites are known to exist around the vicinity of NGC 4214. One is DDO 113, which has an absolute V-band magnitude of −12.2. It stopped star formation around 1 billion years ago. Another, more recently discovered object is MADCASH-2, officially named MADCASH J121007+352635-dw. The name refers to the MADCASH (Magellanic Analog Dwarf Companions and Stellar Halos) project. It is similar to typical ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, with an absolute V-band magnitude of −9.15, except in that it shows evidence of multiple episodes of star formation in its recent past: one around 400 million years ago, and another 1.5 billion years ago.^[7]

One supernova has been observed in NGC 4214: SN 1954A (type Ib, mag. 9.8) was discovered by Paul Wild on 30 May 1954.^[8] [Note: some sources incorrectly list the discovery date as 10 April 1954.]^[9] In addition, the galaxy has hosted one luminous blue variable: SN 2010U (type LBV, mag. 16) was discovered by Kōichi Itagaki on 5 February 2010.^[10][11]

See also

• NGC 4236 – a similar irregular galaxy
• List of NGC objects (4001–5000)