Messier 100 – The Blow-dryer Galaxy

Located roughly 56 million light-years away in Coma Berenices, Messier 100 (M100) is a member of the giant Virgo Galaxy Cluster. With a diameter 120,000 light years, it’s slightly larger than our Milky Way galaxy.

It’s a prime example of a grand-design spiral galaxy—a gigantic collection of stars “with a clearly defined, continuous spiral structure, rather than a patchy or inconsistent spiral structure.” It contains around 400 billion stars. But it also contains a number of Cepheid Variables—stars that pulsate in a regular rhythm, which allows scientists to more accurately measure their distance from us.