NGC 708


NGC 708 is an elliptical galaxy located 240 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda and was discovered by astronomer William Herschel on September 21, 1786. It is classified as a cD galaxy and is the brightest member of Abell 262. NGC 708 is a weak FR I radio galaxy and is also classified as a type 2 seyfert galaxy.
NGC 708 is surrounded by 4700 globular clusters.

Dust lane

Discovered in 1979 by Kotanyi et al., NGC 708 has a thin dust lane with an irregular structure. Besides the dust lane, there are also patches of dust that cross the nucleus. These features are oriented nearly perpendicular to the radio emission of the galaxy. The lane appears to be a nearly edge-on dust disk with a length of .
The dust lane appears to have formed from a cooling accretion flow of Intracluster medium onto NGC 708.
. NGC 705 can be seen at the lower right of the image.|alt=|left

Supermassive black hole

NGC 708 has a supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of .
The supermassive black hole is powering the radio jets and lobes in the galaxy.

Radio morphology

NGC 708 contains two radio jets that are mildly bent and extend into s shaped double radio lobes with a total length of.
Chandra observations have shown that the lobes have created a cavity in the Intracluster medium of Abell 262.

Possible interaction

NGC 708 may be interacting with NGC 705 which lies about to the south-west.