M61 was an issue for Charles Messier from the beginning. He first encountered the spiral galaxy Could 5, 1779, when he mistook it for a close-by comet whose path he had been monitoring. He repeated this error the next night time after which once more on the eleventh earlier than he lastly seen that the “comet” had not moved towards the celebrities.
As soon as Messier realized his mistake, he famous the “nebula that occurs to lie on [the comet’s] path and on the identical level within the sky,” in all probability confirming to him that these uncataloged objects have been however a nuisance to comet hunters. Irrespective of; Italian astronomer Barnabus Oriani had already found M61 on the identical night time Messier first seen it. Oriani was additionally following the comet of 1779, however was not fooled. Messier should have chuckled at Oriani’s description of the item, as he referred to as it “very pale, wanting precisely just like the comet.”
At the moment we all know M61 as a distinguished member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies — regardless of its location almost 10° south of the cluster’s coronary heart. We see this almost 100,000-light-year-long spiral marvel from some 55 million light-years away, giving us a glimpse of what our Milky Way would appear to be if seen face-on at such a distance. Just like the Milky Way, M61 sports activities a small bar from which an intense interior spiral pseudo-ring shows hefty bursts of star formation, hinting at a lurking, central supermassive black hole.
M61 shines at a good magnitude 10 about 5° north and barely east of Eta (η) Virginis. It lies roughly midway between the Sixth-magnitude stars 16 and 17 Virginis. Be warned: A few dozen NGC galaxies lie close by, however M61 is the brightest. Its intensely shiny core is surrounded by a a lot fainter disk that swells into view with 70–150x and averted imaginative and prescient. Average-sized telescopes might hint out the galaxy’s bigger spiral construction. Pictures will reveal its two essential luminous arms — considered one of which bends into two straight sections that meet at a pointy angle — in addition to a large number of fainter arms branching off the primary arms. All these options are studded with star-forming areas, a number of of which seem as mottled patches. An particularly massive focus seems close to the northern finish of the bar.
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