- M 74 (NGC 628)
M 74 is a beautiful but faint spiral galaxy in the constellation Pisces. It is barely visible in low-power telescopes and its discoverer (Pierre Mechain, Messier's colleague) called it "very obscure and extremely difficult to observe." It displays its true beauty in time exposures like mine, where it presents a face-on view of its open spiral structure. It is somewhat reminiscent of M 101 in Ursa Major, without the marked distortion to its spiral arms due to interactions with neighboring galaxies. M 74 lies at a distance of around 25.1 million LY and has a physical diameter of around 77,000 LY, making it a bit smaller than our Milky Way Galaxy.
Numerous pinkish HII regions dot the spiral arms of M 74, which also contain many young clusters of recently formed stars. The core of the galaxy appears to have a bar structure like our Milky Way. M 74 is surrounded by a group of small, faint conpanion galxies, several of which can be seen in my image.
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