Astronomy Picture of the Day: 10/7/13 - Messier 106

This spectacularly colorful image was stitched together by an amateur astronomer, who used data of the galaxy interred in the Hubble Legacy Archive with ground-based data, showing the beauty of one of our galactic neighbors.

The composite showcases the various features the galaxy boasts, which include prominent dust lanes, a gloriously bright central core and the contrast between the bluish regions where clusters of young, energetic stars thrive and the reddish regions that are home to minor starformation activity.

M106, as its called, is a spiral galaxy located about 21 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Canes Venatici. It technically falls under a class of galaxies called the Seyfert class of active galaxies, meaning it contains a central supermassive black hole that is actively feeding on stellar material. So much so that the immediate area can not consume all of the material at once, causing it to build up and form an accretion disk.

References, sources, and further reading can be found here: http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/astronomy-picture-of-the-day-10713-messier-106/

Image Credit: Composite Image Data - Hubble Legacy Archive; Adrian Zsilavec, Michelle Qualls, Adam Block / NOAO / AURA / NSF