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esiegel | December 9, 2013"The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself." -Thomas Szasz
But on this Messier Monday, you're lucky enough that you're about to be introduced to one of the great northern galaxies of the Messier catalogue that is feeding itself! There are 110 deep-sky, non-transient objects that make up the Messier catalogue, and a full 40 of them are galaxies, the most numerous and most distant of all the types of objects catalogued by Messier.
Image credit: Tenho Tuomi of http://www.lex.sk.ca/astro/messier/index2.…
esiegel | October 7, 2013"The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave." -Patrick Henry
It's not a good idea to showcase a galaxy for you every Messier Monday, considering that even a crescent Moon can render most of them completely unobservable. Now that the autumnal equinox has passed, however, a very special spiral will be visible after sunset for the next six months or so in a relatively nondescript part of the night sky. Out of the 110 deep-sky objects that comprise the Messier catalogue, a full forty of them are galaxies, although today's object wasn't recognized as…