| Description | This is the second of three entries posted by Messier on April 15, 1779, discovered while mapping the path of the Comet of 1779 through Virgo. Credit for the discovery is given to Johann Gottfried Koehler who recorded it on April 11, 1779, four days earlier. Messier's catalog entry: "Nebula in Virgo & in the neighborhood of the preceding [M58].... [I]t is of the same light as the above, equally faint. M. Messier reported it on the Chart of the Comet of 1779." <--> For me, this was a very quick capture on a very dark, clear night (before the moon rose). Frankly, while Messier can say "it is of the same light", capturing a spiral galaxy with lots of structure [M58] versus an elliptical galaxy with none, are very different EAA targets, with the latter requiring much less integration time than the former. The "related observation" button takes you to a wide-field image that shows a significant portion of the Virgo cluster including M59 (see also annotated version). |
