Groups and Clusters of Galaxies with Messier objects

Galaxies are usually members of groups or clusters, and those listed in Messier's catalog are no exceptions. Below please find those groups containing Messier galaxies.

Groups of Galaxies containing at least two Messier objects

Ordered roughly by Right Ascension.

Local Group of Galaxies: Messier objects: The Andromeda Galaxy M31 and its satellites M32 and M110, as well as the Triangulum galaxy M33. Other members (over 30 in all) include our Milky Way Galaxy, the Large and the Small Magellanic Cloud (LMC and SMC), as well as several smaller galaxies. It is also somehow associated with the group around the large elliptical Maffei1.
M81 group: Messier objects: M81 and M82. This group is very nearby, only some 11 million light-years distant. Other members include NGC 3077 and NGC 2976, an outlying member of the group is NGC 2403.
M96 group (Leo I group): Messier objects: M95, M96, M105. There are many more galaxies in this group, including NGC 3384 in the same field as M105.
Leo triplett (M66 group): M65 (NGC 3623), M66 (NGC 3627) and NGC 3628. Probably physically related to the M96 group.
Virgo Cluster of Galaxies (or Coma-Virgo Cluster): Messier objects: M49, M58, M59, M60, M61, M84, M85, M86, M87, M88, M89, M90, M91, M98, M99, and M100. The Virgo Cluster with its some 2000 member galaxies dominates our intergalactic neighborhood, as it represents the physical center of our Local Supercluster, and influences all the galaxies and galaxy groups by the gravitational attraction of its enormous mass. Our Local Group has experienced a speed-up of 100..400 km/sec towards this cluster (the Virgo-centric flow), and it is still unclear if at one time it will fall and merge into the cluster. HST observations of Cepheids in M100, together with the work of Nial R. Tanvir on the M96 group extrapolated to this cluster, indicate that the Virgo cluster is at a distance of some 60 million light-years.
M51 group: Messier objects: M51, M63.

Further Messier galaxies contained in groups

The following list contains the Messier galaxies which are members of groups but not listed above; usually, some info on the corresponding groups is included in the object pages for these galaxies. It is ordered roughly by Right Ascension again.

M74 is probably the chief member of a small physical group of galaxies (the M74 group)
M77 is the dominating member of a small but remarkable group of galaxies, the M77 group (sometimes also called the NGC 1068 group).
M83 forms the M83 group together with some conspicuous but quite southern galaxies, including Centaurus A (NGC 5128) and the unusual galaxy NGC 5253.
M101 forms the M101 group of at least 9 galaxies with several faint companions.
The M102 candidate NGC 5866 is the brightest member of a conspicuous group of galaxies in Draco, the NGC 5866 group, which contains (besides NGC 5866) the bright edge-on spiral NGC 5907, NGC 5879, and a lot of fainter galaxies.

Hartmut Frommert (spider@seds.org)
Christine Kronberg (smil@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)

Last Modification: 25 Jan 1998, 16:07 MET