Astral Imaging at Dogwood Ridge Observatory

Latitude: 37°48'51.0" N"
Longitude:78°23'41.0"W
Scottsville, Virginia 24590

(click on thumbnails to go to that image's page)

This galaxy was discovered (as a "Faint Nebula") by William Herschel on November 30, 1787, and cataloged by him as H II.707. His son John Herschel observed it again and cataloged it as h 35 in his catalog of 1833, and as GC 90 in his General Catalogue of 1864. They described it as follows:

• Pretty bright, very large, irregularly round, very gradually much brighter to the middle, resolvable, 5 or 6 [arc min] diameter (1789)
• Pretty bright; large; round; gradually brighter to the middle; full 60" diameter (1833)
• Pretty bright; very large; irregularly round; very gradually much brighter to the middle; barely resolvable [mottled] (1864)

NGC 185 was recognized as a Local Group member galaxy, together with its neighbor NGC 147, by Walter Baade (1944), when he resolved them into stars with the 100-inch reflector on Mt. Wilson. These two dwarf elliptical galaxies apparently form a physical pair, as they are only 58 arc minutes separated; according to Van den Bergh, they are probably gravitationally bound in a physical pair. Both are more remote satellite galaxies of the Andromeda Galaxy M31, but are at a somewhat closer distance to us these times. Modern distance estimates for NGC 185, adjusted for the scale we use here, correspond to some 2.3 million light-years.