Today's Amateur Astronomy Photo of the Day:

Messier 88 (M88; NGC 4501) is a spiral galaxy, one of more than 2,000 galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. It’s about 50-60 million light years away from us in the constellation Coma Berenices. It’s inclined towards us at an angle of about 64 degrees, giving it a three-dimensional appearance. It is made up of about 400 billion stars, and more than 131,000 light years across. It’s relatively small on the sky, but that’s what this telescope specializes in! I included some Ha-filtered frames, which made a nice contribution to the image by subtly showing some red structures in the spiral arms near the core.