What is the Messier 77?

Messier 77 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Cetus. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 8.9 and its angular diameter is 7×6 arc-minutes. M77 lies at an estimated distance of 60 million light years. The Equinox 2000 coordinates are RA= 2h 42.7m, Dec= +00° 02´ which makes M77 best seen during the autumn. The diameter of the molecular disk and hot plasma associated with the obscuring material was first measured at radio wavelengths by the VLBA and VLA. The hot dust around the nucleus was subsequently measured in the mid-infrared by the MIDI instrument at the VLTI. It is the brightest Seyfert galaxy and is of type 2. This spiral galaxy was discovered by P. Méchain in 1780 but Messier misidentified it as a cluster with nebulosity. Nevertheless, it is one of the biggest galaxies in the Messier Catalog. The 3rd Earl of Rosse included M77 in his list of 14 “spiral nebulae” in 1850. M77 is an active galaxy with an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) and is the brightest Seyfert galaxy. According to Stoyan et al. (2010), the distance of M77 is 46.9 million light years and its diameter is 100,000 light years. Its estimated mass is 1000 billion solar masses.

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