#random messier

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Messier 77 (NGC 1068)

It's hard to get your head around 100 billion stars in our own galaxy, never mind the huge distances between us and the nearest of stars, but when we look at other galaxies, we are often looking at spiral galaxies, not so dissimilar, and sometimes very different from our own, millions of light years from Earth, but containing billions upon billions of stars.

M77 while looking similar to our Milky Way, is quite dramatically different. First of all it's size, estimated at over 300 billion stars, is one of the largest galaxies in the Messier catalogue.

At the centre an active galactic nucleus of Seyfert 2 type, or put another way, a supermassive black hole so active, the accretion disk glow is extremely prominent (the largest of which we would call a Quasar), and some of these can shine so brightly, they outshine the entire galaxy.

At the outer edges of the galaxy, star formation is very active, there's a lot of hot clusters of bright blue giant stars (showing as blue/pink) scattered along strongly defined dust and gas lanes on each arm.

The galaxy can be found in the constellation of Cetus, and is 47 million light years from Earth.

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M78 - Reflective Nebula Montage

M78 is 1,350 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion. Reflective nebula simply reflect the light of young superhot stars, are often blue in colour for this reason. Dark dust lanes conceal some of the reflective light, while hydrogen further out glows red as it is bombarded by ultra violet light.

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Random Messier - M61 Galaxy

52.5 Million light years from Earth in the constellation of Virgo, and part of the Virgo cluster, the galaxy is both active (containing a supermassive black hole consuming material) and starburst (having a very large amount of star formation.

The galaxy has an unusual amount of natural hydrogen, which has probably been drawn from the intergalactic area around it, which is responsible for the very high level of star formation.

At the centre of the galaxy there also appears to be a much older area of starburst activity. Such large star formation tends to produce a lot of blue giant stars, which live very short lives and end in black holes, these will have long died, but the remnant black holes will have merged at the centre causing the central black hole to increase faster than in other galaxies.

(M61 in IR)

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M64 Black Eye Galaxy

Or for Spooktober, it could be known by it's other name, the Evil Eye galaxy.

Random Messier for today's post, and one of my personal favourites, 17 million light years from Earth in the constellation of Coma Berenices, it has a very active core, and is known as a type 2 Seyfert Galaxy, meaning it's central black hole is actively consuming mass and generating radio and x-ray radiation. Seyfert galaxies are like baby Quasars, they output just like Quasars, but are not powerful enough to outshine their entire galaxy.

The galaxy also shows a large recent injection of matter, probably indicating some kind of recent merger and as a result, has strong dust and gas areas that obscure the light, set against the bright nucleus, making the galaxy look dark, although I am unsure Evil.

[zespaceblog]

M77 - NGC 1068 (Squid Galaxy)

Located in the Constellation of Cetus and 47 million light years from Earth, the Squid Galaxy hides what is known as a AGN.

These Active galactic nucleus contain supermassive black holes actively feeding on gas and dust, which is also forming an accretion disk.

The galaxy also sports an outer ring or halo of stars which extend out many times further than the spiral structure, which shows a huge amount of star formation in the dust and gas arms.