COMMENTS ON THE PICTURE:

Located about 14 million light years away in the constellation of the Hounds, the galaxy M94 is certainly one of the most beautiful galaxies observable in the spring skyNGC 4736 was discovered by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781. 

Messier 94 is thought to have a diameter of 30,000 to 50,000 a.l. corresponding to its main nucleus. Beyond this, a much fainter-looking halo extends for another few tens of thousands of a.l. It occupies a space of 12.3 x 10.8 arc minutes in the sky. The galaxy is moving away from us at about 300 km/s and is thought to contain 40 billion stars. M 94 is the leading member of a group of galaxies called the Hound Cloud (or Hound Group I or M 94 group). Although part of the group, the component galaxies appear to have little gravitational interaction with each other. On the other hand, they are moving in much the same direction.

Contrary to what one might think at first sight, M 94 is not a ring galaxy, but a spiral galaxy: its spiral structure (without a ‘bar’) is well marked in the central zone and the peripheral disc is in reality only the result of a slow deformation and partial dislocation of the different arms.