Spiral Galaxy M95 (NGC 3351), type SBb, in Leo

[m95.jpg]
Right Ascension 10 : 44.0 (h:m)
Declination +11 : 42 (deg:m)
Distance 38000 (kly)
Visual Brightness 9.7 (mag)
Apparent Dimension 4.4x3.3 (arc min)
Discovered by Pierre Mechain
       1781

M95 is a barred spiral of type SBb, or SB(r)ab according to de Vaucouleurs' classification, with nearly circular arms. Alan Sandage, in the Hubble Atlas of Galaxies, calls it a "typical ringed galaxy". Its overall appearance is quite similar to M91 except that M95 has more pronounced spiral structure.

M95 was one of the galaxies in the key project of the Hubble Space Telescope for the determination of the Hubble constant: the HST was employed to look for Cepheid variables and thereby determine this galaxy's distance. A preliminary result has been  a distance of 35.5+-3.1 million light years. This is in semi-good agreement with the value of about 41 million light years (after correction for Hipparcos results) which had been obtained earlier by Nial R. Tanvir for its neighbor M96, and implies a distance of all the galaxies in the Leo I or M96 group of about 38 million light years.

Messier observed M95 on March 23th, 1781 "Nebula without a star in Leo, above the star l (53 leonis). Its light is very faint." Charles Messier from his catalogue

Courtesy www.seds.org