M61 was an issue for Charles Messier from the beginning. He first encountered the spiral galaxy Might 5, 1779, when he mistook it for a close-by comet whose path he had been monitoring. He repeated this error the next evening after which once more on the eleventh earlier than he lastly observed 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 similar level within the sky,” most likely confirming to him that these uncataloged objects had been however a nuisance to comet hunters. Regardless of; Italian astronomer Barnabus Oriani had already found M61 on the identical evening Messier first observed it. Oriani was additionally following the comet of 1779, however was not fooled. Messier should have chuckled at Oriani’s description of the thing, as he known as it “very pale, wanting precisely just like the comet.”
Right this 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 like if seen face-on at such a distance. Just like the Milky Way, M61 sports activities a small bar from which an intense inside 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 vivid core is surrounded by a a lot fainter disk that swells into view with 70–150x and averted imaginative and prescient. Reasonable-sized telescopes might hint out the galaxy’s bigger spiral construction. Photographs will reveal its two fundamental luminous arms — one in every 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 giant focus seems close to the northern finish of the bar.
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