Messier_Galaxies

Messier Galaxies
	One five minute white light image of part of Messier 31, the "Andromeda" galaxy and one of its satellite galaxies, Messier 32. This image was taken on 14th August, 2001 at Terlingua Ranch in west Texas. M31 is one of the nearest galaxies to us and is definitely the closest large galaxy, at only 2.5 million light years away. It can be seen with the naked eye in moderately dark skies, and is huge, covering an area five times that of the full moon, although only the bright core can be seen without visual aids
	Messiers 31 and 32 in the constellation of Andromeda. This image was also taken with the FSQ-106 operating at f/5. The sheer size of M31 can be seen in these images, and to give an understanding of scale, the image shown here covers one degree. Exposure used was 5 x 10 minute stacked luminance frames, and ten minutes each of red, green and blue
	Messier 33 in Triangulum. This image, taken with the FSQ-106 at f/5, is an LRGB comprising 60 minutes of white light images and 30 minute 2x2 binned colors. Note the detail in the arms of the galaxy, the regions of star formation and the areas of nebulosity. This galaxy is very large and although "bright" appears faint in a telescope. It is impossible to find in a bright sky. Full Resolution Image (1.04Mb)
	M33 taken with the C14 and ST10-XME camera on 15th September, 2012. This is an LRGB of 60:40:40:40 minutes and clearly shows some of the interesting areas of nebulosity and the bright blue stars in the spiral arms. Full Resolution Image (2.5Mb)
	Messier 49
	Messier 51 - The famous face-on spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici. This galaxy is fun to image, and in darkest skies you can make out the spiral arms visually in the C-14 at about 250x. This images was taken at our Spanish Observatory on 11th June 2007 and is an LRGB of 60:40:40:40 through the C14 scope and using the ST10-XME camera. Full Resolution Image (1.0Mb)
Messier 58	Messier 59	Messier 60	Messier 61
	Messier 63 - the "Sunflower" galaxy. This galaxy gets it's name from the flocculant nature of the arms, clearly visible in the main image. This photo, taken in Spain on 15th July, 2009 is an LRGB of 60:20:20:20 minutes using the C14 scope at f/7 and the SBIG ST10-XME camera. Full resolution image (3.5Mb)
	Messier 64 - The famous "Blackeye Galaxy". A close examination of this image shows that the black eye is in fact a wall of gas and dust surrounding the centre of this galaxy, which is located in Coma Berenices, just behind the tail of Leo, the Lion. This image, taken in Spain on 10th June, 2007 with the C14/ST-10XME combination is an LRGB of 60:40:40:40 minutes. Full Resolution Image (1.8Mb). Core Detail.
	Messier 65 in Leo. A member of the Leo Trio of galaxies, M65 is a beautiful standard spiral with a neat dust lane clearly seen in this image. It is member of the Leo 1 sub-group of galaxies at distance of 31 million light years. This is an LRGB of 50:30:30:30 minutes with the C14 and ST10-XME camera, taken in Spain on 21st June, 2008 under poor seeing conditions and in a moderate gale. Full resolution image (2.1Mb).
	Messier 66 - Another of the "trio", M66 is a barred spiral, and this image shows how one of the arms is distorted through interaction with NGC 3628, the third member of the group
	Messier 74 - Imaged in Spain on 14th October, 2009 this magnificent face-on spiral in Pisces is quite faint, but looks beautiful in images such as this. It is so faint that for a long time it was classified as a globular cluster - only the rather brighter core being visible in smaller telescopes. M74 is similar in structure to M33 (see image on this page) but is more than fifteen times further away, at 40 million light years distant. It is estimated that M74 is approximately the same size as our Milky Way galaxy. Full Resolution Image (3.0Mb)
	Messier 77 - An interesting Messier, this active "Seyfert" galaxy was imaged as an LRGB of 50:40:40:40 mins in November 2011 in Spain. Image processing has brought out detail in the core, the little spiral arms and also the larger fainter structures surrounding the main galaxy. Full resolution image (2.6Mb) and Full Resolution Cropped Image (1.2Mb)
	Messier 81, a fine spiral galaxy located close to Messier 82 in Ursa Major. It was discovered by Bode in 1774 and added to Messier's catalogue in 1781. M81 is about 10 million light years away from us and it has a diameter of about 70,000 light years. Calculations show that it shines with the light of 17 billion of our suns and it presents a delicate, yet majestic sight against the dark background of space
	This image of M81 is a "first light" image for our new PlaneWave telescope. It was taken using the SBIG ST10-XME camera and is an LRGB of 40:20:20:20 minutes. Full Resolution Image (2Mb)
	Messier 82 - Located in the constellation of Ursa Major, this is a magnificent magnitude 8.4 galaxy, of an irregular and peculiar nature. The core is very irregular in profile and severed in two almost equal parts by a diagonal dark band. This image of M82 was taken with the C14 in 2002. It is an LRGB of 60:15:15:15 minutes and was not published for 5 years. Full resolution image (0.6Mb)
	M81 and M82, dual galaxies in the constellation of Ursa Major, are well known, but it is not generally known how close to each other in the sky they are. This image, taken with our Takahashi FSQ telescope shows the relative sizes. M82 is the smaller, peculiar galaxy to the left and M81 is the larger spiral galaxy to the right. Both are about 15 million light years away from us. This LRGB image is a combination of 40:30:30:40 minutes. Full resolution image (1.8Mb)
	Messier 83, a beautiful galaxy way down in the southern sky in the constellation of Hydra. It was actually discovered by Lacaille at the Cape of Good Hope in 1752 and Messier added it to his catalogue in 1781. This beautiful galaxy is 22 million light years distant and is part of the Centaurus Galaxy Group. M83 has a diameter of about 100,000 light years. Full resolution image (2.3Mb)
	Messier 85
	Messier 87, a giant elliptical galaxy in Virgo is also a strong emitter of radio waves, known as Virgo A. M87 is one the major members of the Coma-Virgo supercluster if galaxies and it lies at a distance from us of 65 million light years. It is 135,000 light years in diameter
	Messier 88, is very close in the sky to the Virgo galaxies, but is in fact in Coma Berenices. This galaxy was discovered by Messier in 1781and it is one of the giant spiral members of the Coma-Virgo supercluster, lying near the northern end of 3 degree long arc of galaxies, that begins in Virgo with the M84/M86 pairing. This galaxy is in the region of 125,000 light years in diameter
	Messier 89 was discovered by Messier in 1781, on the same night that he discovered Messiers 84, 85, 86, 87, 88 and 89. It is a somewhat smaller galaxy than some of the rest, with a diameter of about 64,000 light years
	Messier 90, discovered in 1781 is a member of the Coma-Virgo supercluster. In spite of this it does show a blue shift, which means it is moving towards us, rather than away, probably as a result of the rotation of the cluster
	Messier 91 is another of those Messier objects about which there is some dispute regarding its true identity. Current thinking is that this object, NGC 4548 is the correct candidate, but there is even a suggestion that M91 might have been a comet
	Messier 95 - Discovered by Mechain in 1781, M95 lies 31 million light years distant and is a member of the Leo I galaxy cloud. At magnitude 9.7this barred spiral galaxy forms an interesting Greek "Theta" letter and has a very bright core, as seen in the image. The theta shape can just be seen visually in our telescope using averted vision. Full resolution image (1.2Mb)
	This image of M95 was taken with our Takahashi FSQ-106 at Terlingua Ranch, west Texas on 19th December, 2001. It is a composite of 4 x 10 minutes luminance, and ten minutes each of the colors. This wider field image also shows several faint galaxies, the brightest of which is CGCG 66-3 (magnitude 15.6) towards the right edge of the image
	Messier 96 lies very close to M95 in Leo and is in fact part of the same group of galaxies. Discovered by Mechain in 1781, M96 is slightly smaller than M95 (62,000 light years in diameter) but also slightly more luminous, with a luminosity of 16 billion of our suns. These two galaxies are so close together in the sky that it is a good indicator of where you are if you see them together. You just have to sort out which is which!
	Messier 98 in Coma Berenices was discovered by Mechain in 1781. It is one of the brighter members of the Coma-Virgo galaxy cluster, 65-70 million light years distant, has a mottled, irregular appearance, and is one of the few galaxies with a blue shift, meaning it is moving towards us - at 243 Km per second. Two other galaxies are visible in the image - UGC 7223 (Magnitude 15.6) to the upper right and NGC 4186 (magnitude 14.6) to the lower right
	Messier 99 in Coma Berenices. Part of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, M99 is 4.6 arc minutes in diameter and was discovered by Mechain in 1781. It is about 70 million light years distant and has the largest recessional velocity of the cluster, at 2,380km per second. Full Resolution Image (3.1Mb)
	Messier 100, is a large spiral galaxy in the Coma-Virgo galaxy cluster. We are looking at this galaxy face-on, and several other galaxies are also visible: NGC 4312 (magnitude 12.5) above and to the right, NGC 4322 (magnitude 14.0) which is the fainter and smaller galaxy to the left, NGC 4328 (magnitude 14.0) below the main galaxy and IC 783A (magnitude 15.2) at the top of the image. 65 million light years away, M100 is large. It is 130,000 light years in diameter and was entered into Messier's catalogue in 1781. Full resolution image (0.6Mb)
	Messier 101 - the "Pinwheel" galaxy in Ursa Major. An image taken at the La Divisa Observatory on 20th April 2006. Image details are - 4 inch Takahashi FSQ-106 refractor at f/5. SBIG ST-8XE CCD camera cooled to -15C. Ten 5 minute luminance and ten 5 minute shots each in red, green and blue. Stacked and processed in MaxIm DL and then further processed in Photoshop. Full sized image (0.5Mb)
	Messier 102, in the constellation of Draco. This object is in some dispute, because there was no object at the location given by Messier and during modern times various people have "assigned" M102 to this galaxy, also known as NGC 5866. It is a bright, edge on galaxy. Full Resolution Image (1.2Mb)
	Messier 104 - The "Sombrero" galaxy in Virgo. M104 is 65 million light years distant, has a diameter of 135 million light years and is sixteen times brighter than our galaxy. The numerous globular clusters associated with M104 can be seen in this image. This image was taken at our Spanish observatory on 22nd March, 2009. It is an LRGB of 25 minutes for each component, imaged using the ST10-XME camera on the C14. Full resolution image (2.1Mb)
	Messier 105, is a "spherical elliptical" - if that isn't a contradiction of terms! It is the upper galaxy in this image, and M105 is fascinating because it has two nearby companions which are rather different, NGC 3384 - a smooth, lenticular to the lower left and NGC 3389 - a loosely wound spiral to the lower right. This trio is part of the western half of the Leo I galaxy cloud, 31 million light years away
	Messier 106
	Messier 108 is one of many, many galaxies in the constellation of Ursa Major. Discovered by Mechain in 1781 or 1782 (no-one seems to know quite when), this interesting galaxy is seen edge on. In this image you can see the mottling and a mixture of bright and dark patches. The galaxy appears to have a central bar, and it can be found near to the bright star Beta Ursa Majoris, not far from M97, the Owl Nebula
	Messier 109 - Can be found in the constellation of Ursa Major, this barred spiral galaxy was viewed by Messier, but was not added to his famous catalogue until the 20th century. M109 is 46 million light years distant, glowing at magnitude 9.8 and with a true luminosity of 19 billion of our suns Full resolution image (1.4Mb)
	Messier 110, one of the satellite galaxies of Messier 31, the great galaxy in Andromeda. This galaxy is surrounded by globular clusters, several of which are visible in this LRGB image of 60:30:30:30 minutes taken with the C14 at f/7 using the ST8 camera. The image was taken on 4th January, 2007. Full resolution image (1.1Mb)

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