The featured sharp image of M77 was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and is dominated by the (visible) red light emitted by hydrogen. The image shows details of the spiral's winding spiral arms as traced by obscuring dust clouds, and red-tinted star forming regions close in to the galaxy's luminous core.
Messier 77 (M77), also known as Cetus A, is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Cetus. It lies at a distance of 47 million light years and has an apparent magnitude of 9.6. The galaxy has the designation NGC 1068 in the New General Catalogue. Messier 77 is one of the largest galaxies included in the Messier catalogue.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of spiral galaxy Messier 77 — a galaxy in the constellation of Cetus, some 45 million light-years away from us. The streaks of red and blue in the image highlight pockets of star formation along the pinwheeling arms, with dark dust lanes stretching across the galaxy’s starry centre.
2019 December 16. The Magnetic Fields of Spiral Galaxy M77. Image Credit: NASA SOFIA HAWC+ JPL-Caltech Roma Tre. U. ESA Hubble NuSTAR SDSS. Explanation: Can magnetic fields help tell us how spiral galaxies form and evolve? To find out, the HAWC+ instrument on NASA's airborne ( 747) SOFIA observatory observed nearby spiral galaxy M77 .
Messier 77. Image Credit: NASA ESA André van der Hoeven. Explanation: Face-on spiral galaxy M77 lies a mere 47 million light-years away toward the aquatic constellation Cetus . At that estimated distance, the gorgeous island universe is about 100 thousand light-years across.
One of the biggest galaxies in Charles Messier's famous catalog, M77 is also known as NGC1068. It is also what astronomers call a Seyfert Galaxy with an Acti...
M77 is an active galaxy with an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) and is the brightest Seyfert galaxy. According to , the distance of M77 is 46.9 million light years and its diameter is 100,000 light years. Its estimated mass is 1000 billion solar masses. For more information, see the as well as specific entries for M77 in and .