M105

elliptical galaxy · the Leo I group · in Leo

36 million light-years from Earth

A smooth, almost round elliptical galaxy. Méchain found it in 1781 and described it in a letter in 1783, but it joined Messier's list only in 1947, when Helen Sawyer Hogg brought that letter back to light. With its neighbour NGC 3384 it sits inside the Leo Ring, a ring of hydrogen about 650,000 light-years across: radio telescopes see its gas, and it holds only a few faint knots of new stars.

• 36 million light-years · about 51,000 light-years across
• its black hole weighs 200 to 400 million Suns

kind

galaxy

catalogue

M105 · NGC 3379

size

51,300 light-years across