Galaxies

M31 or NGC224 is the familiar Andromeda Galaxy. This exceptional large and bright spiral galaxy is readily visible to the naked eye at a dark site or even faintly to the trained observer from the city. M31 lies about 2.3 million light years away and is approximately 25 percent larger than our own Milky Way. It has dark spiral lanes viewable in 10 inch telescopes and its neighbors M110 and M32 are visible companion elliptical galaxies to the lower right of center and upper left of center respectively. Click HERE for a close up of the core  area.

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The Pinwheel or Triangulum Galaxy is a large and faint spiral galaxy about 2.5 million light years distant and 50,000 light years across (or about 1/3 the breadth of our Milky Way Galaxy). Some say it can be seen with the naked eye in very dark skies. One can start to make out the spirals quite well in larger amateur telescopes and individual stars within this galaxy are clearly present in quality images.

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M63 is a tightly wound spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici located 35 million light years away.  It's spiral arms a comprised of many short arcs unlike the few large and well defined arcs of the Milky Way. It is easily seen in various size telescopes and noted for a very bright core. 

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This lovely face-on spiral galaxy is about the same size as our Milky Way and lies about 40 million light years away in the constellation Pisces. It's faint spiral arms used to make it hard to distinguish from globular cluster but thanks to modern equipment it is easily seen today.

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M100 is a large bright spiral galaxy in the Coma-Virgo Galaxy Cluster about 65-70 million light years away. Its spiral arms are only visible in larger amateur telescopes.  Several faint galaxies are visible in this image and the brighter elongated galaxy below is NGC4312. 

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M104, also known for obvious resemblance to the Mexican hat as the "Sombrero Galaxy," is an edge-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo (also just northeast of Corvus). With an exceptionally bright core, and prominent dust lanes, M104 stands out well especially in larger telescopes. It is approximately 29.3 million light years away and 130,000 light years in diameter.

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This uncommon pairing of interesting objects is found in the constellation Ursa Major. M108 is an interesting edge-on spiral galaxy with complex dust lane structure while M97 (commonly known as the Owl Nebula for it's round shape with shadowed eyes) is a bright planetary nebula formed from an aging star. Click on the image or this link for a close up of M97. Seeing these two objects together provides an excellent contrast in relative distance and size among observed celestial objects.  M108 is far beyond our Milky Way galaxy at about 45 million light years away from the Earth while M97 (as are all observable planetary nebula) is much closer at only about 2,600 light years away centered in our region within the Milky Way galaxy.

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