Messier 106 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici (which literally means "hunting dogs" in Latin). It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781. If that sounds familiar, it's because the galaxy in my previous image (M94) was also discovered by Mechain in 1871. A good year for the young astronomer, who was only 27 at the time. M106 has a diameter of 135,000 light years - only slightly bigger than our own Milky Way at 105,700 light years. About 23.5 million years ago a supermassive star 8 to 12 times the mass of the sun exploded near the center of the M106. In April 2014, we finally found out about it when the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT) at the Lick Observatory just outside of San Jose, Calfornia, photographed a faint "new star" ("nova" in Latin) in one of the galaxy's inner rings.