| Description | Another Messier discovery (#27) while comet hunting, recorded April 15, 1779, a gap of 10 weeks. "Very faint nebula discovered in Virgo... The slightest light for illuminating the micrometer wires makes it disappear. M. Messier reported it on the chart of the Comet of 1779, which is located in the volume of the Academy for the same year." <--> One of the brightest galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, it was nevertheless the most distant galaxy in the Messier catalog. It's still classified as an "intermediate" spiral though the bright "bar" is quite distinct. |
