Messier 109 (also known as NGC 3992) is a
barred spiral galaxy
A barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy with a central bar-shaped structure composed of stars. Bars are found in about two thirds of all spiral galaxies, and generally affect both the motions of stars and interstellar gas within spiral galaxi ...
exhibiting a weak inner ring structure around the central bar approximately
[ away in the ]northern
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a ra ...
constellation
A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object.
The origins of the e ...
Ursa Major
Ursa Major (; also known as the Great Bear) is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. Its Latin name means "greater (or larger) bear," referring to and contrasting it with nearby Ursa ...
. M109 can be seen south-east of the star Phecda
Gamma Ursae Majoris (γ Ursae Majoris, abbreviated Gamma UMa, γ UMa), formally named Phecda , is a star in the constellation of Ursa Major. Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as one of the stable anchor poi ...
(γ UMa, Gamma Ursa Majoris).
History
Messier 109 was discovered by Pierre Méchain
Pierre François André Méchain (; 16 August 1744 – 20 September 1804) was a French astronomer and surveyor who, with Charles Messier, was a major contributor to the early study of deep-sky objects and comets.
Life
Pierre Méchain was born i ...
in 1781. Two years later Charles Messier
Charles Messier (; 26 June 1730 – 12 April 1817) was a French astronomer. He published an astronomical catalogue consisting of 110 nebulae and star clusters, which came to be known as the ''Messier objects''. Messier's purpose f ...
catalogued the object, as an appended object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ai ...
to his publication.
Between the 1920s through the 1950s, it was considered that Messier objects over 103 were not official, but later the additions, further referred target objects from Méchain, became more widely accepted. David H. Levy
David Howard Levy (born May 22, 1948) is a Canadian amateur astronomer, science writer and discoverer of comets and minor planets, who co-discovered Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in 1993, which collided with the planet Jupiter in 1994.
Biography
L ...
mentions the modern 110 object catalog while Sir Patrick Moore
Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore (; 4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012) was an English amateur astronomer who attained prominence in that field as a writer, researcher, radio commentator and television presenter.
Moore was president of the Brit ...
places the limit at 104 objects but has M105 to 109 listed as addenda. By the late 1970s all 110 objects are commonly used among astronomers and remain so.
General information
In March 1956 came M109's sole event-observed supernova
A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when ...
, 1956A. It was a type Ia supernova
A Type Ia supernova (read: "type one-A") is a type of supernova that occurs in binary systems (two stars orbiting one another) in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. The other star can be anything from a giant star to an even smaller white ...
in the south-east part of the galaxy, glowing at magnitude 12.8, reaching 12.3 at its maximum.
This galaxy is by far the most distant object in the Messier Catalog, followed by M91.
M109 has three satellite galaxies
A satellite galaxy is a smaller companion galaxy that travels on bound orbits within the gravitational potential of a more massive and luminous host galaxy (also known as the primary galaxy). Satellite galaxies and their constituents are bound ...
(UGC 6923
UGC may refer to:
Science and technology
* Universal gravitational constant G, in physics
* Uppsala General Catalogue, an astronomical catalogue of galaxies
* UGC, a codon for cysteine
* Unique games conjecture, a conjecture in computational comp ...
, UGC 6940
UGC may refer to:
Science and technology
* Universal gravitational constant G, in physics
* Uppsala General Catalogue, an astronomical catalogue of galaxies
* UGC, a codon for cysteine
* Unique games conjecture, a conjecture in computational comp ...
and UGC 6969
UGC may refer to:
Science and technology
* Universal gravitational constant G, in physics
* Uppsala General Catalogue, an astronomical catalogue of galaxies
* UGC, a codon for cysteine
* Unique games conjecture, a conjecture in computational comp ...
) and possibly more. Detailed hydrogen line
The hydrogen line, 21 centimeter line, or H I line is the electromagnetic radiation spectral line that is created by a change in the energy state of neutral hydrogen atoms. This electromagnetic radiation has a precise frequency of , w ...
observations have been obtained from M109 and its satellites. M109's H I (H one) distribution is regular with a low-level radial extension outside the stellar disc, while in the bar is a central H I hole in the gas distribution. Possibly the gas has been transported inwards by the bar, and because of the emptiness of the hole no large accretion events can have happened in the recent past.M109 Group
The M109 Group (also known as the NGC 3992 Group or Ursa Major cloud) is a group of galaxies
A galaxy group or group of galaxies (GrG) is an aggregation of galaxies comprising about 50 or fewer gravitationally bound members, each at least as ...
, a large group of galaxies
A galaxy group or group of galaxies (GrG) is an aggregation of galaxies comprising about 50 or fewer gravitationally bound members, each at least as luminous as the Milky Way (about 1010 times the luminosity of the Sun); collections of galaxies ...
in the constellation
A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object.
The origins of the e ...
Ursa Major
Ursa Major (; also known as the Great Bear) is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. Its Latin name means "greater (or larger) bear," referring to and contrasting it with nearby Ursa ...
that may number over 50.
Gallery
File:Messier109 - SDSS DR14 (panorama).jpg, M109 image by Sloan Digital Sky Survey
File:M109HunterWilson09.jpg, Amateur image of Messier 109
File:M109 wfc3 2flat new-1-cropped.jpg, Core of galaxy M109, Hubble image captured by Wide Field Camera 3
File:Messier109Location.png, Finder chart for galaxy Messier 109 (circled in blue)
See also
* List of Messier objects
The Messier objects are a set of 110 astronomical objects catalogued by the French astronomer Charles Messier in his ''Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d'Étoiles'' (''Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters'').
Because Messier was only int ...
* NGC 1300
NGC 1300 is a barred spiral galaxy located about 61 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. The galaxy is about 110,000 light-years across. It is a member of the Eridanus Cluster, a cluster of 200 galaxies.
It was discovered b ...
– a similar barred spiral galaxy
References
External links
*
*
M109
{{Sky, 11, 57, 36, +, 53, 22, 28, 46320000
Barred spiral galaxies
M109 Group
Ursa Major (constellation)
109
NGC objects
06937
Astronomical objects discovered in 1781
037617
+09-20-044
11549+5339
Discoveries by Pierre Méchain