Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  IC 3478  ·  M 88  ·  M 91  ·  NGC 4501  ·  NGC 4516  ·  NGC 4548
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M88, M91 (and friends), Doug Summers
M88, M91 (and friends)
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M88, M91 (and friends)

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M88, M91 (and friends), Doug Summers
M88, M91 (and friends)
Powered byPixInsight

M88, M91 (and friends)

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Description

Two galaxies for the price of one in this image.   Messier 88 is a spiral lying ~60 million light-years distant in Coma Berenices.    It has a 6.5 x 3 arcminute extent on the sky, meaning the upper end of true size is on the order of  120K light years in diameter (long edge).    M91 is a barred spiral also in Coma Berenices.  It is further away than M88, having a distance of ~63 million light-years.   It's size is 6 arcmins x 4.5 arcmins, implying a true size slightly smaller than M88 at 110K light-years.

Both galaxies have well defined structure, and are imposed on a field that is littered with other smaller galaxies.   Normally I would isolate each galaxy for its own closer view, but in this case,  I thought the pairing looked better together.   It's a nice field.

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