Bode's Galaxy
M81 · NGC 3031
A bright, beautifully symmetric spiral, the dominant member of a nearby group it shares with the Cigar Galaxy.
Bode's is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major about 12 million ly from Earth. It spans roughly 90,000 ly, about the width of our Milky Way. The light reaching us tonight left it about 12 million years ago.
Spiral
type · Sab
12 million ly
from Earth · measured
90k ly
across
6.9
apparent magnitude
Because its light is 12 million ly from home, you are seeing Bode's as it looked roughly 12 million years ago. The photons left before that much of history had passed, and are only now reaching us.
At the centre
Bode's Galaxy Central Black Hole
A supermassive black hole of 70.0 million ☉.
Nearest galaxies
CigarStarburst320,000 ly
apartAndromedaSpiral11 million ly
apartTriangulumSpiral11 million ly
apartMilky WayBarred spiral12 million ly
apartLarge Magellanic CloudIrregular12 million ly
apartSmall Magellanic CloudIrregular12 million ly
apart
Worlds in the same direction on the sky→apartAndromedaSpiral11 million ly
apartTriangulumSpiral11 million ly
apartMilky WayBarred spiral12 million ly
apartLarge Magellanic CloudIrregular12 million ly
apartSmall Magellanic CloudIrregular12 million ly
apart
Source: structural data (position, morphology, brightness, redshift) from OpenNGC (CC BY-SA). Distance from published measurements.