Messier 60 — Galaxy in Virgo

M60 (NGC 4649) is a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo, located approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo Cluster. At magnitude 8.8, it is one of the brightest and most massive elliptical galaxies in the cluster. M60 spans about 7.4 by 6.0 arcminutes, corresponding to a true diameter of roughly 120,000 light-years. The galaxy contains a colossal supermassive black hole of approximately 4.5 billion solar masses — one of the largest ever measured, over a thousand times the mass of the Milky Way's central black hole. M60 is orbited by approximately 5,100 globular clusters. It has a notable companion, the spiral galaxy NGC 4647, which appears to overlap M60 in projection and may be in the early stages of a gravitational interaction.

Located in the eastern part of the Virgo Cluster, about 4 degrees east of Rho Virginis. M60 is the brightest of the M58-M59-M60 trio and the easiest to spot. In binoculars it appears as a small, moderately bright fuzzy spot. A 4-inch telescope at 80-100x shows a bright, round glow with a prominent nucleus. With an 8-inch telescope, the companion galaxy NGC 4647 becomes visible as a faint smudge touching M60's halo to the northwest — they appear almost overlapping. M59 is visible in the same low-power field. Best observed from March through June.

Discovered by Johann Gottfried Koehler in April 1779. Charles Messier independently found it on April 15, 1779, the same night he cataloged M58 and M59. The relationship between M60 and its apparent companion NGC 4647 has long been debated — early observations suggested they might be interacting, and Hubble Space Telescope images from 2012 confirmed signs of early-stage tidal interaction between the two galaxies.