Messier 74, Phantom Galaxy
The beautiful galaxy "Messier 74" was discovered in 1780. It is located at a distance of about 30 million light years in the constellation Pisces and
can therefore be observed best in late autumn. The visual magnitude is 9.0mag, but you should not be blinded by this value. The galaxy has a very
low surface brightness of only 14mag/'² and is the most difficult object in the Messier catalog to observe. Probably this is the reason for the nickname
"Phantom Galaxy", because only the bright core of Messier 74 is visible when the sky is brighter, while the spiral arms and the halo disappear completely.
The galaxy belongs to the group of "Grand Design Spiral Galaxies" at which we look directly from above (Face On). It has two spiral arms which wrap around
the nucleus counterclockwise. In the spiral arms many HII regions and star clusters can be found. The diameter of the disk is 95,000 light-years. This makes
M74 only a little smaller than our own Milky Way. It is assumed that the galaxy hosts about 100 billion stars. Three supernovae have been observed
so far in the 20th century: in 2002, 2003, and 2013.
At the center of the galaxy, there is evidence of a black hole with only 10,000 solar masses. This is quite unusual, since supermassive black holes
(SMBH) in similarly sized spiral galaxies usually have several million solar masses.
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As written above, Messier is one of the most difficult objects in the Messier catalog. The galaxy is easy to see under dark skies with 20" aperture, but
the detection of the spiral arms requires a lot of patience. They appeared very faint under the conditions of this observation night (which unfortunately
were not quite optimal), but they were easy to follow once seen. In this respect the arms are in reality fainter than shown in the drawing. The center,
on the other hand, appears bright and prominent.
With a quite high magnification of 270x I searched afterwards for HII- regions in the spiral arms. Out of 10 marked regions 9 could be seen, the tenth
would have been possible, too, but I forgot to observe it... Maybe some other time ;)
#1: indirect easy, homogeneous
#2: indirect easy, small
#3: indirect easy, quite bright, high FH
#4: very difficult and small
#5: difficult, small, homogeneous
#6: indirect easy, small
#7: indirect easy, close to the nucleus
#8: indirect easy, a little bit elongated
#9: forgotten to observe ;)
#10: not so easy, homogeneous
West of Messier 74 and a bit off is a small background galaxy that was quite easy to see at 270x. Unfortunately it has no designation that I could figure
out via SIMBAD.
