APOD: 2022 April 14 - Messier 96

Good morning, Rallypoint, and welcome to the April 14th Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): "Messier 96." First discovered in 1781 by French astronomer Pierre Méchain and confirmed four days later by Charles Messier, this galaxy is similar in size to our Milky Way and lies 31 million light years away in the constellation Leo. Ultraviolet emissions from its core suggest the presence of a supermassive black hole. How massive? Somewhere between 150,000 and 4,800,000 times the mass of the Sun.

A supernova was detected in Messier 96 (M96) in 1998. Observational data suggest that this explosion created 0.4 solar masses of iron, and also detected significant levels of radioactive cobalt (which decays to iron). M96 is the namesake of the 'M96 Group' of galaxies that also contains M95 and M105, both discovered by Pierre Méchain. M105 was added to the Messier catalog after a 1955 discovery of a letter from Méchain to Messier reporting his findings of this threesome.