Welcome back to Messier Monday! Today, we continue in our tribute to our dear friend, Tammy Plotner, by looking at the spiral galaxy known as Messier 88!
During the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noticed the presence of several “nebulous objects” while surveying the night sky. Originally mistaking these objects for comets, he began to catalog them so that others would not make the same mistake. Today, the resulting list (known as the Messier Catalog) includes over 100 objects and is one of the most influential catalogs of Deep Space Objects.
One of these objects is the spiral galaxy known as Messier 88 (New General Catalog designation 4501), a spiral galaxy located between 50 and 60 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. M88 was one of the first celestial objects to be recognized as a spiral galaxy and is one of the brighter galaxies of its kind in the Virgo Cluster.