Celestial Objects
Messier 106
Galaxies
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Messier 106 is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, discovered by the French astronomer Pierre Mechain in 1781 and lying between about 22 and 25 million light-years from Earth. It hosts an active nucleus classified as a type 2 Seyfert galaxy, and radio observations of a disk of molecular gas orbiting within the inner light-year of its center have demonstrated the presence of a central supermassive black hole; beyond its two visible spiral arms, the galaxy also shows two "anomalous arms" detectable only in X-rays, and NGC 4217 is thought to be a companion galaxy.
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