What Is The M106 Galaxy?
The M106 (also known as Messier 106 or NGC 4258) galaxy is an intermediate nearby spiral galaxy that is fascinating to look at. It has a long, winding disk of stars and dust that looks like a tornado. The galaxy is located about 24 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. Because it’s relatively close to Earth, makes it an excellent target for amateur astronomers.
It is a member of the Local Group, which includes the Milky Way and other galaxies. It is also part of the Virgo Cluster, one of the largest clusters of galaxies in the universe. The M106 galaxy has about 400 billion stars and is about 135,000 light-years across.
In May 2014, astronomers observed a Type II supernova in M106. This is the first time that this type of explosion has been observed in this galaxy.
The Messier 106 galaxy is a well-known and popular object in the night sky. However, there may be another galaxy lurking nearby – NGC 4217 (see also picture 2 below, M106 Galaxy – Annotation galaxies). It is an edge-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. This galaxy was discovered on the 10. of April in 1788 by the German-British astronomer William Herschel and it seems to be orbiting Messier 106 at a distance of about 60 million light-years. This suggests that there may be a larger population of galaxies out there that we haven’t yet discovered. If this is true, then NGC 4217 could be one of the key discoveries that helps us to understand the structure and evolution of the universe.
M106 has an apparent magnitude of 8.4 and can be spotted with a small telescope. But if you want to resolve more detail, you’ll need a larger telescope. In the Northern Hemisphere, this galaxy is best observed during spring, when galaxy season starts. Galaxy season starts end March and ends in June. From the Southern Hemisphere, it is a difficult object to spot because it never rises high enough above the northern horizon.
What Is The Classification of The M106 Galaxy?
It’s a relatively young galaxy that is located in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was discovered by astronomer Pierre Méchain, an assistant of Charles Messier, in July 1781 and was initially classified as a spiral nebula. However, further study revealed that it was a galaxy and was later renamed to reflect this fact. The M106 is classified as a Type II Seyfert galaxy.
Seyfert galaxies are one of the two largest groups of active galaxies. They are named after their discoverer, astronomer Carl Seyfert (February 11, 1911 – June 13, 1960). He was an American astronomer who first described this class of galaxies in 1943. These galaxies are characterized by their high rate of star formation and the presence of a large central supermassive black hole.
What Does The M106 Spiral Galaxy Look Like?
It is a galaxy with an estimated diameter of about 135,000 light-years. The M106 galaxy has a prominent central bulge and a warp-shaped disc structure extending from the center toward the outer edge of the galaxy. The red-colored spiral arms are well-defined and appear to be winding around each other. These are called anomalous arms.
In these spiral arms are dark dust lanes and some of the youngest stars in the galaxy can be found in the blue star clusters. The pink-dotted nebulae in the spiral arms are active regions where stars are forming.
How Did The M106 Spiral Galaxy Form?
The galaxy likely formed from the merger of several smaller galaxies.
Galaxies are thought to form from small clouds of gas and dust that swirl through space. As objects get closer to each other, the gravitational force causes them to collide and join together into larger spinning packs. This process can also sling material away from the center of the galaxy, creating spiral arms filled with stars.
What Are The Features Of The M106 Spiral Galaxy?
The galaxy has an active core (nucleus), which is responsible for its bright appearance. The black hole in the center of M106 is about 30 million times the mass of our Sun. That’s 7,5 times more than our Milky Way, whose black hole core is about 4 million times the mass of our Sun. A supermassive black hole is present in the center of almost all large galaxies. The spiral arms of the M106 galaxy are also quite bright, due to the abundance of stars and gas within them.
It is one of the largest and brightest nearby galaxies, similar in size and luminosity to the Andromeda Galaxy.
The water masers in M106 enabled the first time that astronomers were able to measure the distance to a galaxy. Therefore, M106 is seen as an important object to calibrate the cosmic distance ladder. An astronomical maser is a type of natural microwave emission. These emissions may originate from molecular clouds, comets, planetary atmospheres, stellar atmospheres, or other conditions in interstellar space.
The M106 spiral galaxy is an amazing object with many features that are unique among galaxies. It is interesting to study and represents the best of what science can offer us.
Astrophotography
M106 is an appealing galaxy to image. As well with a wide field telescope, like a refractor, or with a reflector/mirror telescope. It is already possible to get good results using a single-shot colour camera and long exposures, like 5 minutes for example. With these long exposures, you can bring out more detail to the outer arms that are fainter than the rest of the galaxy.
For my image above, I used an 86mm TS86SDQ APO from Telescope Optics with a ZWO ASI533MC Pro and the STC Astro Multispectra filter (broadband, anti-light pollution filter). It’s the first time ever I imaged M106/NGC 4258. The astrophoto was taken in Bortle Class 6 skies. Next year, I’ll try again to photograph this target but with an 8″ reflector telescope and I will add some H-alpha data to it.
Image details
- Telescope: Telescope Optics TS86SDQ Quadruplet Apo
- Mount: Sky-Watcher NEQ5 Synscan GoTo
- Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro
- Filter: STC Multispectra 2″
- Telescope control: ZWO ASIair gen.1
- Software: Astro Pixel Processor (stacking); PixInsight (processing) & Affinity Photo (final touch)
No guiding
The image at the left is the same widefield image of the M106 spiral galaxy as above but with the designation (annotation) of the most obvious galaxies that can be found nearby M106.
