M56 is one of the less bright globular clusters lying in a low power Milky Way field and lacking the bright core which most globulars of this type have. Nevertheless it is not too difficult to resolve, even at its rather great distance of 32,900 light years.

Not to be confused with other types of nebulae, a planetary nebula is formed when a star reaches middle age, swells to many times its original size and puffs out layers of gas into space which glow around the hot star at the centre.

The central star was discovered in 1800 by the German astronomer Friedrich von Hahn using a 20-foot FL reflector. This object is a planet-sized white dwarf star, which shines at about 15th magnitude. It is the remainder of a Sun-like star, probably once of greater mass than our Sun, which has blown away its outer envelopes at the end of its Mira-like phase of evolution. Now over 100,000 K hot, it will soon start to cool down, then shine as a white dwarf star for several billions of years before eventually ending as a cold Black Dwarf.

M58 is one of four barred spiral galaxies in Messier's catalog (the others are M91, M95 and M109) although it is sometimes classified as intermediate between normal and barred spiral. It is one of several galaxies against the constellation of Virgo.

Smaller telescopes show M58 as similar to Virgo´s elliptical galaxies, apearing only as its bright nucleus. Under good conditions, 4-inch or larger scopes show a halo of uneven brightness with condensations which seem to coincide with brighter areas of the spiral arms. A suggestion of M58's bar may be noticed with telescopes starting from 8-inch, as an "extension of the central nucleus in an EW direction".

M59 is a member of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, and one of its larger elliptical galaxies although it is considerably less luminous and massive than the greatest ellipticals in this cluster, M49, M60 and M87. M59 is believed to house system of about 2,000 globular clusters, considerably less than the three giants previously mentioned but significantly larger than our Milky Way Galaxy.

The lower image shows M59 as the elongated elliptical galaxy in the lower left. To the right is M60 and its companion NGC 4647 and, at the top, another ellipitcal galaxy the faint NGC 4638.

Examined by the Hubble telescope, M60 has been discovered to contain at least 2 billion stars at its massive centre. M60 is conspicuous in telescopes starting from 4-inch because of its faint neighbor, NGC 4647, shown in the image.

M60 is one of the giant elliptical galaxies in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. As the most following (eastern) Messier galaxy in this cluster, it is the last in a row of three (M58, M59 and M60) which come into the field of view of a telescope pointed to this region of the sky. At lower magnifications it lies in the same field of view as M59 (25 arc minutes away).

With a distance of 60 million light years, this galaxy's apparent diameter of 7x6 arc minutes corresponds to a linear diameter of 120,000 light years. Amateur telescopes, however, only show its bright central region of about 4x3 arc minutes diameter. Its visually apparent magnitude makes it a very bright galaxy of absolute magnitude -22.3, corresponding to an intrinsic luminosity of 60 billion suns.