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Messier 88

This galaxy's core holds supermassive black hole roughly 100 million times more massive than our Sun.

Distance

63 million light-years

Apparent Magnitude

9.5

constellation

Coma Berenices

object type

Spiral Galaxy

A large spiral galaxy. It is seen tilted at an angle, so that it is foreshortened and appears very wide. Its tightly-wound, blue spiral arms swirl out from its glowing center, spreading apart at the tips. They are followed by strands and clumps of dark red dust and spotted with pink dots where stars are forming in clouds of gas. The galaxy is surrounded by a slight glow and lies on a dark background.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy Messier 88 (M88).
ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker

Located approximately 63 million light-years away, M88 is a spiral galaxy with well-defined and symmetrical arms. Although it is a member of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, it appears in the neighboring constellation of Coma Berenices.

M88 contains an active galactic nucleus, meaning the central region of the galaxy is more luminous than the rest of the galaxy. At the galaxy’s core resides a supermassive black hole estimated to be 100 million times more massive than our Sun. M88 contains around 400 billion stars and is traveling away from our galaxy toward the center of the Virgo Cluster, about two million light-years from where it is today. In 200–300 million years, M88 will make its closest approach to Messier 87, the massive elliptical galaxy that anchors the entire cluster. 

Charles Messier discovered M88 in 1781 on the same night that he discovered eight other Messier objects. As one of the brighter Messier galaxies, it can be observed with a pair of large binoculars from a dark location under good viewing conditions. Smaller telescopes will reveal an elongated object with a brighter core, while larger telescopes will unveil further details, such as a more defined core. M88 has a magnitude of 9.5 and is best observed in May.

M88
NASA, ESA, and P. Erwin (Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

This Hubble observation of the core of M88 combines visible and infrared observations obtained by the Wide Field Camera 3, and captures swirling bands of dark dust as well as clusters of stars. It was taken as part of a study of galactic bulges ― the central group of stars surrounding a spiral galaxy’s core ― focusing on the process of galaxy evolution and the growth of supermassive back holes.

M88 inset 01
This ground-based image shows the entirety of galaxy M88 while the white outline indicates the section captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
Ground-based image: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; WFC3 image: NASA, ESA, and P. Erwin (Max-Planck-Institut fur extraterrestrische Physik); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Hubble image of M88
This Hubble observation was taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 using a single visible-light filter. With Hubble, observations in multiple filters are needed to produce color images, so this image of nearly half the galaxy is in black and white.
NASA, ESA, STScI, and M. Stiavelli (STScI)
star chart showing location in night sky of M88
This star chart for M88 represents the view from mid-northern latitudes for the given month and time.
Image courtesy of Stellarium

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