Messier 59 and 60

M59 (right) is an elliptical galaxy 60 million light years away in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, which has a population of more than 2,000 galaxies. M60 (left) is also about 60 million light years away and is the larger of the two by a significant margin.

While M59 is slightly smaller than the Milky Way, it likely contains more stars, which means it has a higher stellar density. It’s stars are generally old or middle-aged because it is largely bereft of gas to form new stars with. A black hole with a mass of 270 million suns lurks at its center, and more than 2,200 globular clusters stalk its outer regions. An unusual feature is that the central region of the galaxy orbits in the opposite direction of the other stars in the galaxy.

M60 is around 120,000 light years in diameter, while M59 is approximately 90,000 light years in breadth. Its mass is stunning at around that of a trillion suns, and at its center is a monster supermassive black hole with a mass of 4.5 billion suns! The smaller spiral galaxy at its two o’clock position is NGC 4647. It’s not clear whether the two galaxies are interacting, but recently gathered evidence suggests that they could be.

On the other hand, in close proximity to M60 lies a small elliptical galaxy dubbed M60-UCD1 ("UCD" stands for ultra-compact dwarf). In the image, it looks like a star, but it actually contains as many as 140 million suns and harbors a supermassive black hole with a mass of 21 million suns—five times the mass of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way. Scientists believe that this used to be a larger galaxy, but interaction with M60 stripped away the vast majority of its stars.