Hold a penny at an arms lenght up towards the sky. That's larger than the apparent size of Messier 106 in the night sky if it were visible to the naked eye. This intermediate spiral galaxy is 24 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. In the core of the galaxy is a supermassive black hole 40 million times larger than our own sun. Its very active source of X-ray radiation and it has warped the disk of dust and gas around it. This creates the iconic red streams of gas falling towards the center of this galaxy seen in many photographs taken with large telescopes like Hubble Space Telescope. To my suprise they are visible in my photo too. However this is at the limit of my telescopes resolving capability and seeing conditions so the details are washed out.
