Key facts
- Constellation s
- Virgo & Coma Berenices
- Right ascension
- 12 27
- Declination
- +12 ° 43 ′
- Brightest member
- Messier 49
- Number of galaxies
- ~1,500
- Parent structure
- Virgo Supercluster
- Bautz morgan classification
- III
- Distance
- 53.8 ± 0.3 Mly (16.5 ± 0.1 Mpc )
- Binding mass
- 10 M ☉
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- gravitational lens
- Part of
- Virgo Supercluster
- Has part
- VIRGOHI21
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Image
- Virgo Cluster taken by Vera C. Rubin (noirlab2521a).jpg
Show 11 more facts
- Commons category
- Virgo cluster
- topic's main category
- Category:Virgo Cluster
- discoverer or inventor
- Charles Messier
- time of discovery or invention
- 1781-00-00
- right ascension
- 186.63375
- declination
- 12.72333
- redshift
- 0.0038
- apparent magnitude
- 8.49
- epoch
- J2000.0
- radial velocity
- 1137
- catalog code
- 2MAXI J1230+124
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Virgo Cluster is a cluster of galaxies whose center is 53.8 ± 0.3 Mly (16.5 ± 0.1 Mpc) away in the Virgo constellation. Comprising approximately 1,300 (and possibly up to 2,000) member galaxies, the cluster forms the heart of the larger Virgo Supercluster, of which the Local Group (containing the Milky Way galaxy) is a member. The Local Group actually experiences the mass of the Virgo Supercluster as the Virgocentric flow. It is estimated that the Virgo Cluster's mass is 1.2×10 M☉ out to 8 degrees of the cluster's center or a radius of about 2.2 Mpc.
Many of the brighter galaxies in this cluster, including the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, were discovered in the late 1770s and early 1780s and subsequently included in Charles Messier's catalogue of non-cometary fuzzy objects. Described by Messier as nebulae without stars, their true nature was not recognized until the 1920s.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Virgo Cluster” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.