M 77

This magnificient galaxy is one of the biggest galaxies in Messier's catalog, its beight part measuring about 120,000 light years, but its faint extensions going perhaps out to nearly 170,000 light years. Its appearance is that of a magnificient spiral with broad structured arms,which in the inner region show a quite young stellar population, but more away from the center, are dominated by a smooth yellowish older stellar population.

M77 is about 60 million light years distant, approximately the same distance but another direction as the Virgo cluster, and is receding from us at about 1100 km/sec, as was first measured by Slipher of Lowell Observatory in 1914.

This galaxy is unique and peculiar because of several reasons. First, its spectrum shows peculiar features in the form of broad emission lines, indicating that giant gas clouds are rapidly moving out of this galaxy's core, at several 100 km/sec. This feature classifies M77 as a Seyfert galaxy of type II. An enourmous energy source is required to generate this velocity, which must sit in the galaxy's core. This core was found to be a strong radio source, and it was now investigated by the Hubble Space Telescope.

More images of M77

Right ascension	02 : 40.1 (hours : minutes)
Declination	+00 : 14 (degrees : minutes)
Distance	30000.0 (light-years*10^3)
Visual magnitude	8.9