I captured this image of the Croc’s Eye Galaxy (M94, also called the Cat’s Eye Galaxy) yesterday in my yard in Victoria, BC, using a total of 3 hours of exposure. It’s an unusual galaxy – it has a an inner ring with a diameter of 5,400 light-years and an outer one with a diameter of 45,000 light-years. Pressure from the galactic core compresses the gas and dust clouds in the outer ring, where gravity pulls them together to form new stars. These stars pull in more gas and dust, resulting in a relatively empty region separating them from yet another layer of gas at the periphery of the galaxy.
M94 has a remarkably low amount of dark matter for a galaxy – the stars comprise almost all of its mass. Their light travelled for 16 million years before reaching my telescope.
