M61, the Swelling Spiral Galaxy (Frank Alvaro)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Virgo (Vir) · Contains: M 61 · NGC 4292 · NGC 4301 · NGC 4303

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M61, the Swelling Spiral Galaxy

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M61, the Swelling Spiral Galaxy

Messier 61 (M61, NGC4303) is a barred spiral galaxy located in the southern constellation Virgo. It is one of the largest galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, a massive group of galaxies containing more than 1,300 members. With a diameter of about 100,000 light years, M61 is roughly the same size as our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 10.18 and lies at a distance of 52.5 million light years from Earth.

Messier 61 is classified as a starburst galaxy, one undergoing an extremely high rate of star forming activity. The galaxy has an active galactic nucleus (AGN) and a candidate supermassive black hole with an estimated mass of about 5 million solar masses. A young, compact massive star cluster associated with the object occupies an area with a radius of 3.1 parsecs. The cluster has a mass about 100,000 times solar and is surrounded by a nuclear spiral about 225 parsecs in radius, consisting of multiple massive star-forming regions, possibly associated with a second bar within the galaxy, one considerably smaller than the main one.
(edited from messier-objects.com)

Southern Hemisphere Astro
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Australian Astrophotographers

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The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9727539
PixInsight job	U2ET1ACQEL9RGC1K5LTQ9XKUMI7FVZ66
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	12h21m53s.400
RA (top/left)	12h22m33s.881
RA (top/right)	12h21m12s.156
RA (bottom/right)	12h21m12s.230
RA (bottom/left)	12h22m33s.924

Dec (center)	+04°30′22″.55
Dec (top/left)	+04°38′39″.96
Dec (top/right)	+04°38′38″.40
Dec (bottom/right)	+04°22′04″.72
Dec (bottom/left)	+04°22′06″.38

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M61, the Swelling Spiral Galaxy

M61, the Swelling Spiral Galaxy

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M61, the Swelling Spiral Galaxy

M61, the Swelling Spiral Galaxy

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