Sunflower Galaxy
What is Sunflower Galaxy?
Galaxies· Distance ~27 million ly. Instead of bold spiral arms, short broken pieces of spiral cover its disc, making it look like a sunflower. It is a standard example of this kind of spiral, and a faint stream of stars left by a small galaxy it swallowed loops around it.
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Its place in the sky
A galaxy, in the direction of Canes Venatici, spanning about 12.6 arcminutes of sky — 0.4 times the width of the full Moon.
Distance and scale
| Distance | ~27 million ly |
|---|---|
| Diameter | ~100,000 ly |
| Type | flocculent spiral — short, fragmented arms |
| Constellation | Canes Venatici |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Discovery and name
Found by Méchain in 1779 — the archetype of a "flocculent" spiral with fleecy, fragmented arms.
Why the Sunflower's outer stars do not slow down
The Sunflower Galaxy's disc is tilted at a helpful angle for measuring how fast it spins. Astronomers used radio waves from hydrogen gas in the galaxy to measure the speed of rotation at different distances from the centre. The result was surprising. Farther from the centre, the speed hardly dropped at all and stayed about the same. In the solar system, by contrast, the outer planets move more slowly.
The weight of the stars and gas we can see is not enough to keep the outer material moving that fast. At those speeds it should fly off into space. So scientists think the galaxy is held together by invisible material called dark matter. In the 1970s Vera Rubin and others found this pattern in many spiral galaxies, and the Sunflower is one of the galaxies that shows it.
The galaxy in depth
The Sunflower Galaxy is number 63 in Messier's list, so it is also called M63. It is a spiral galaxy about 27 million light-years away in Canes Venatici. At about 100,000 light-years across, it is similar in size to the Milky Way, but it looks quite different. Instead of two or three thick arms, dozens of short, broken pieces of spiral cover its disc. They look like the seeds packed into the face of a sunflower.
Galaxies like this are called flocculent spirals, meaning fluffy or woolly. The long arms of galaxies such as the Whirlpool are thought to form along huge waves that sweep through the whole disc. The short arms of the Sunflower, by contrast, are thought to start as patches of star birth here and there that are then stretched out as the galaxy turns. That makes it a good galaxy for comparing the two kinds of spiral.
Photos that gather light for a long time show a faint stream of stars looping far around the galaxy. Scientists think it is what remains of a small galaxy swallowed long ago. The Sunflower was discovered in 1779 by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain. Look between Alkaid, at the end of the Big Dipper's handle, and Cor Caroli in Canes Venatici. A small telescope shows a bright centre inside an oval glow.
Frequently asked
- How far is Sunflower Galaxy from Earth?
- The distance of Sunflower Galaxy is ~27 million ly.
- How big is Sunflower Galaxy?
- The diameter of Sunflower Galaxy is ~100,000 ly.
- What kind of object is Sunflower Galaxy?
- Sunflower Galaxy is a flocculent spiral — short, fragmented arms.
- Where in the sky is Sunflower Galaxy?
- Sunflower Galaxy lies in the direction of Canes Venatici.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.