Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Centaurus (Cen)  ·  Contains:  NGC 4616  ·  NGC 4622
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NGC 4622 - the Backward Galaxy (and friends), Kevin Burfitt
NGC 4622 - the Backward Galaxy (and friends)
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NGC 4622 - the Backward Galaxy (and friends)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 4622 - the Backward Galaxy (and friends), Kevin Burfitt
NGC 4622 - the Backward Galaxy (and friends)
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NGC 4622 - the Backward Galaxy (and friends)

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Description

The main galaxy in this image is the face-on unbarred spiral galaxy NGC 4622, part of the Centaurus Cluster in the southern skies.
This is an unusual galaxy for a couple of reasons.   It has a ring structure in the middle, which is barely visible in this image.  It also rotates 'backwards' - in that the outer spiral arms are leading, with the galaxy rotating clockwise as seen in this image - the opposite way to most galaxies.

This was an extremely hard galaxy to image, it is quite small  (apparent size is just over 1.5 arc-minutes diameter) and gaint (magnitude 12.6)

Also in this image is a galaxy in the bottom left which I believe is NGC 4603D, quite a few fuzzy blobs and lines that are other galaxies, and a larger fuzzy in the bottom right which is actually the elliptical galaxy NGC 4616

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