Observational astronomical survey reveals 3,680 confirmed galaxies across the Virgo cluster, expanding known cluster members by a factor of 2.3.
The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS) is a deep, high-resolution imaging campaign that used the 1 deg 2 MegaCam instrument on the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope to carry out a comprehensive optical survey of the Virgo cluster, from its core to its virial radius. The NGVS covers a contiguous area of 104 deg 2 (8.63 Mpc 2 at the 16.5 Mpc distance of Virgo) in the u *, g , i , and z bands, with additional limited coverage in r . In this paper, we present the final catalog of Virgo galaxies across the entire NGVS area. The catalog includes 3680 galaxies considered to be bona fide members of the cluster, spanning a factor of 2.5 million in luminosity, from g = 8.42 mag to g = 24.41 mag ( M g = −22.67 mag to M g = −6.68 mag). With 2100 previously uncataloged galaxies, the NGVS catalog augments the number of known Virgo members by a factor of 2.3. The catalog is complete down to g = 18.6 mag ( M g = −12.5 mag, corresponding to a stellar mass M ⋆ ∼ 1.6 × 10 7 M ⊙ for an old stellar population) and 50% complete at g = 22.0 mag ( M g = −9.1 mag, M ⋆ ∼ 6.2 × 10 5 M ⊙ ), 3 mag deeper than the venerable Virgo Cluster Catalog (VCC), which for over 40 yr has served as the reference standard for Virgo. Photometric and structural parameters are derived for all NGVS galaxies and presented in a series of tables, alongside nuclear and morphological classification, as well as stellar masses and, when available, radial velocities.
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Ferrarese et al. (2026) studied this question.
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