Messier Monday: A Spiral Sliver Headed Our Way, M98 (Synopsis)

“[L]ife is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.” -Virginia Woolf

One of the only members of the Virgo Cluster… that isn’t located in Virgo!

When it comes to wonders of the night sky, you might think that if you've seen one galaxy, you've seen them all. But much like our own Milky Way, each one has its own history, its own present, and its own future. To each of its hundred billion stars and all their planets, it's the most important galaxy in the Universe.

Image credit: © 2006 — 2012 by Siegfried Kohlert, via http://www.astroimages.de/en/gallery/M98.html. Image credit: © 2006 — 2012 by Siegfried Kohlert, via http://www.astroimages.de/en/gallery/M98.html.

This Messier Monday, let's take a look at a rare blueshifted galaxy of the Virgo Cluster: Messier 98!

Go and read all about it over at Starts With A Bang on Medium!

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Hey, Ethan,
when you say M98 is headed toward us, do you mean that literally, or are we (our galaxy), in fact, overtaking M98 because its velocity is less than our Milky Way?

It's all relative...