M88

Object Type: Spiral Galaxy
Scope: C-14"; Exposure 75 minutes.

Messier 88 (NGC 4501) is a spiral galaxy roughly 47-60 million light-years away in Coma Berenices, discovered by Charles Messier in 1781. It is one of the brighter members of the Virgo Cluster and appears to be falling in toward the cluster's center on an elongated orbit; its motion through the hot intracluster gas is stripping hydrogen from its leading edge (ram-pressure stripping). Tilted about 64 degrees to our line of sight, it is a well-ordered Sbc spiral with a Type 2 Seyfert nucleus powered by a central black hole of around 80 million solar masses. Supernova 1999cl appeared in the galaxy in 1999.