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Photographer:

Rod Pommier

Location of Photo:

Pommier Observatory, Portland, OR, USA

Date/Time of photo:

2020-04-10 through 2020-04-19

Equipment:

Telescope/Mount: Celestron Compustar C14 with Starizona LF reducer/corrector (f/7.5). Camera: SBIG STL 11000M with Baader Planetarium LRGB filters. Adaptive Optics: SBIG AO-L at 2 Hz.

Description:

Messier 106 is a spiral galaxy lying 22-25 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is a Seyfert galaxy with an active nucleus emitting radio waves and X-rays due to presence of a supermassive black hole actively consuming matter within its core. Violent churning of spiral arms, dust clouds, and sprays of ionized hydrogen can be seen revolving around the nucleus and jetting up out of the plane of the galaxy. This is likely attributable to a recent tidal interaction with another galaxy, as also evidence by the warping of the galaxy's disk. The irregular galaxy to its lower left is UGC7356, which lies at a similar distance, and the edge-on spiral galaxy to its lower right is NGC 4248, which lies 24 million light-years away. Both are potential candidates for having caused the tidal interaction. Other faint, distant galaxies can be seen scattered around the image.

Website:

https://www.rodpommier.com