#messier 90

[chibinotan]

Blueshift Spiral

[astro-galactic-ostrology]

Messier 90

Located in the constellation Virgo, M90 is approximately 59 million light-years away from Earth and has a magnitude of 9.5. M90 is believed to be breaking away from the rest of the galaxies in the Virgo cluster and is one of the few galaxies traveling toward our Milky Way galaxy.

[quiltofstars]

M90 // Samuel Müller

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M90 // sydney

Nearby to M90 is an irregular galaxy IC 3583 (right). In this deep image, you can see some of the shells and filamentary structure between the two galaxies. This pairing might be only temporary. M90 is currently moving towards us at about 850,000 mph while IC 3583 is moving away from us at 2.5 million mph.

It is unlikely that they'll remain close together and continue to interact. Instead, they'll only have this brief flirtation.

[quiltofstars]

M90 // Ben Hayes

One of the largest and brightest spiral galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, M90 has tightly wound spiral arms with very little star formation going on within them. Some people have started calling it an "anemic" galaxy. It might be on its way to becoming similar to the Black Eye Galaxy (M64) before it evolves into a lenticular galaxy.

[quiltofstars]

M90 (center) and the much closer galaxy IC 3583 (left) // Rocco Sung

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M90 (upper left) and IC 3583 (right) // John Bozeman

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Markarian’s Chain // Ethan Pearson

Some of the more prominent galaxies include: the pair known as “the Eyes”, M86 (left eye) and M84 (right eye) along with the “mouth” NGC 4388. The galaxy at bottom center is M87, at bottom left is M89 and M90, and the three brightest at top left (from left to right) are NGC 4571, M91, and M88.