ESO has released a beautiful photo taken by the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the spiral galaxy Messier 99.
This image, taken by the FORS2 instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows the grand design spiral galaxy Messier 99. It is based on data obtained through four filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: ESO.
Messier 99 resides at a distance of about 42 million light-years in the constellation of Coma Berenices.
This galaxy was discovered, together with the neighboring Messier 98 and Messier 100, by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain on March 15, 1781.
Charles Messier observed Messier 99 a month later and saw a ‘nebula without star, of a very rare light, but a little clearer than the previous. The nebula is between two stars of the 7th & 8th magnitude.’
Also known as M99, NGC 4254, IRAS 12162+1441 and LEDA 39578, it has a diameter of around 80,000 light-years.
It contains about 100,000 million solar masses — less than our own Milky Way Galaxy — and belongs to the Virgo Cluster.
It has an unusual, asymmetric shape with a displaced core and unequal spiral arms. It is a rare example of a galaxy with one dominant spiral arm.
“Messier 99 is special, owing to its classification as a grand design spiral galaxy: a kind of galactic architecture featuring strong, prominent, well-defined arms that wrap clearly around the galaxy’s center,” ESO astronomers said.
“Only around 10% of all spirals are of the grand design variety, making objects like Messier 99 somewhat uncommon.”
“The justification behind Messier 99’s categorization is clear in the new VLT image; bright, swirling arms carve through the dark surrounding space, and are easily identifiable as a number of different, coherent structures.”
