M 90

M90 is one of the larger (9.5x4.5') spirals in the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. It has tightly wounded, smooth bright spiral arms, which appear to be completely "fossil", meaning that currently no star formation appears to take place, with the only exception of the inner disk region, near the darker dust lanes. J.D. Wray speculates that this galaxy may be on the way to evolve into a state similar to M64, and then into a lenticular (S0) system.

Although M90 is conspicuous and big, Holmberg has derived quite a low value for its mass, which implies that this may be a very low density galaxy. As it is approaching us at 383 km/sec, it must have the very high peculiar velocity of nearly 1500 km/sec through the Virgo cluster into the direction pointing to us, and possibly is just in process of escaping the cluster; some sources have speculated it may already have left the cluster and be now a considerable distance nearer to us. Only one Messier galaxy is faster in approaching us, M86.

Right ascension	12 : 34.3 (hours : minutes)
Declination	+13 : 26 (degrees : minutes)
Distance	70000.0 (light-years*10^3)
Visual magnitude	10.0