Galaxies are a collection of billions of stars that wrap around a central core. Also known as "Island Universes", galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. Our own Milky Way is a Spiral Galaxy. Galaxies group together to form Clusters and Superclusters, that stretch across the known universe. It has been recently discovered that Supermassive Black Holes lurk at the core of most (if not all) galaxies, including our own.
Our closest major galactic neighbor is M31, the Andomeda Galaxy. It is clearly visible to the naked eye as a "fuzzy star" under reasonably dark skies. Unfortunately , the human eye cannot detect all of the color and detail in galaxies, so looking at one through a telescope is disappointing to some people. Galaxies are so distant that thier light must travel for millions of years to reach us, and that is what makes observing galaxies so fascinating to me. Below are galaxies that I have observed from the Messier Catalog.
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