The Hockey Stick Galaxy: NGC 4656 in Canes Venatici | Mayall Telescope

The Hockey Stick Galaxy: NGC 4656 in Canes Venatici | Mayall Telescope

This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the 4-meter Mayall Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. NGC 4656, also known informally as the "hockey stick galaxy," is a distorted edge-on spiral galaxy. Its distinctive shape is due to a recent gravitational interaction with the galaxy NGC 4631. It is not yet certain, but these two galaxies may be in the early stages of merging. The faint object in the upper-left corner may not be part of the galaxy, but instead be a dwarf galaxy in the process of merging with NGC 4656. The image was generated with observations in the B (blue), V (green), I (orange) and Hydrogen-Alpha (red) filters. In this image, North is up, East is to the left.

The Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope is a four-meter (158-inch) reflector telescope in Arizona named after Nicholas U. Mayall. It saw first light on February 27, 1973, and was the second-largest telescope in the world at that time.

Credit: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and H. Schweiker (WIYN and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA)

Release Date: June 30, 2020

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