The bright spiral galaxy M106 must be at a distance of about 21 or 25 million light-years. She is moving away from us at 537 km / sec.
The spiral arms apparently end in brilliant bluish dots (knots), which are most likely young star clusters, dominated by the most massive, very hot and very bright; the presence of these stars is a sign that clusters can not be very old, since such massive stars have a short life span of a few million years. Thus the blue dots show us the regions where star formation is recent!
Following the spiral arms in the direction of rotation, and more particularly on the right of the galaxy (above NGC4217), are the yellowed remains of an old arm. Its color indicates that the most massive stars have stopped shining a long time ago, while the color mix of those remaining produces this yellow-green appearance. J.D. Wray estimates that the age of the stellar population in this fossil arm is several hundred million years old.
In 1995, research using the Very Large Baseline Array Radio Telescope provided information to prove that M106 would house a dark, massive object that could take us as far away from the lowest possible center as possible today: apparently 36 million solar masses would be in a volume of radius between 1/24 and 1/12 of light-year (27 000 and 54 000 AU). This would be the highest concentration of material ever detected.
M106, hides in its heart a supermassive black hole, which radiates especially in the radio field.
Telescope ASA 10'
Paramount MyT
CCD Moravian G2-4000 (-15°)
Total exposure : 36 hrs.
Luminance : 101x300s
Ha : 49x900s
RGB : 64x300s