[M64, Bill Keel] [PNG]

M64 from the University of Alabama

The "Black Eye" or "Sleeping Beauty" galaxy M64 was recently shown to have two counterrotating systems of stars and gas in its disk. The peculiar dust lane on one side of the nucleus (also a site of star formation, as shown by the blue knots imbedded in it) may be caused by material from a former companion which has been accreted but has yet to settle into the mean orbital plane of the disk.

This image is a three-color composite from BVR CCD frames taken with an RCA CCD at the 1.1-meter Hall telescope of Lowell Observatory, by Bill Keel and Anatoly Zasov.

Credit: Bill Keel, University of Alabama.

  • More images from Bill Keel's collection

    [M64, anonymous source] [PNG]

    Image of M64 from an anonymous source.

  • HST images of M64
  • Amateur images of M64

    Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org)
    Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

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    Last Modification: 4 May 1999, 13:00 MET