Jul 8, 2024
Messier 108 - Surfboard Galaxy
M108 is a fairly isolated barred spiral galaxy in Ursa Major some 28.7 million light years from Earth.
The galaxy sports a supermassive black hole of 24 million solar masses, and was thought to be active, but IR observations have questioned that.
Although the galaxy is defined as a barred spiral galaxy, close up from Hubble shows little definition in terms of arms, instead there appears to be a super shell of gas, most likely an inflow from outside the galaxy, that has created a burst of star formation around it.
