NGC 4472

Messier 49 (NGC 4472) is a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo, approximately 55 million light-years away, and is the brightest member of the vast Virgo Cluster of galaxies. It was discovered by Charles Messier on February 19, 1771 — making it the first Virgo Cluster galaxy to be recorded and the first extragalactic object discovered by Messier himself. NGC 4472 is classified as type E4, meaning it appears moderately flattened. Like most giant ellipticals, it has a smooth, featureless appearance: no spiral arms, no dust lanes, no visible star-forming regions — just a symmetrical, softly glowing sphere of old stars that fades gradually into the surrounding sky.

NGC 4472 is an enormous system. It contains an estimated trillion stars, has a luminosity roughly ten times that of our Milky Way, and spans nearly 160,000 light-years — one of the most massive galaxies in our cosmological neighborhood. Buried at its center is one of the most massive supermassive black holes known, with a mass of around 6 to 10 billion solar masses. The galaxy's smooth stellar population consists almost entirely of ancient red and yellow stars, with very little gas or dust remaining to fuel new star formation — a characteristic of giant ellipticals that have consumed most of their raw material in early, intense episodes of star formation billions of years ago. M49 is surrounded by a rich system of about 5,900 globular clusters.

In binoculars M49 appears as a small, star-like glow; a small telescope shows an oval smudge with a brighter central nucleus. This image was taken in December 1996 at the Kitt Peak National Observatory 0.9-meter telescope.