NGC 4214 is a dwarf barred irregular galaxy located around 10 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered on 28 April 1785 by German-British astronomer William Herschel. NGC 4214 is a member of the M94 Group.

Characteristics

NGC 4214 is both larger and brighter than the Small Magellanic Cloud as well as a starburst galaxy, with the largest star-forming regions (NGC 4214-I and NGC 4214-II) in the galaxy's center. Of the two, NGC 4214-I contains a super star cluster rich in Wolf-Rayet stars and NGC 4214-II is younger (age less than 3 million years), including a number of star clusters and stellar associations. NGC 4214 also has two older super star clusters, both with an age of 200 million years and respective masses of 2.610.5 and 1.5106 solar masses. Two satellites are known to exist around the vicinity of NGC 4214. One is DDO 113, which has an absolute V-band magnitude of −12.2. It stopped star formation around 1 billion years ago. Another, more recently discovered object is MADCASH-2, officially named MADCASH J121007+352635-dw. The name refers to the MADCASH (Magellanic Analog Dwarf Companions and Stellar Halos) project. It is similar to typical ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, with an absolute V-band magnitude of −9.15, except in that it shows evidence of multiple episodes of star formation in its recent past: one around 400 million years ago, and another 1.5 billion years ago. One supernova has been observed in NGC 4214: SN 1954A (type Ib, mag. 9.8) was discovered by Paul Wild on 30 May 1954. [Note: some sources incorrectly list the discovery date as 10 April 1954.] In addition, the galaxy has hosted one luminous blue variable: SN 2010U (type LBV, mag. 16) was discovered by Kōichi Itagaki on 5 February 2010.