M109 is approximately 84 million light years away from Earth, which makes it the most distant object in the Messier catalogue. It is located in the Ursa Major Cloud, a giant but loose collection of galaxies also called the M109 group. It occupies a small apparent area of sky and requires the use of at least 20x80 binoculars on a clear dark night to observe it, though it may be slightly hidden by the glare of the second magnitude star Phecda in Ursa Major. In fact, this image shows some evidence of Phecda with faint rays of light visible running from top to bottom.

M109 is a barred spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, however, its diameter is almost twice as large at 200,000 light years. There are about one trillion (10¹²) stars in M109, some three times more than in the Milky Way.

The galaxy is surrounded by a number of smaller galaxies, clearly visible towards the bottom of this image. They are, from left to right; UGC 6969 (80Mly), PGC 2438633 (720Mly), PGC 2832098 (56Mly), UGC 6940 (81Mly) and UGC 6923 (54Mly). PGC 2438633 is the most distant object that I have identified in one of my images to date (December 2017).

This discovery of this galaxy is somewhat contentious. On 12th March 1781, Pierre Méchain first thought he had discovered three objects. On 24th March Charles Messier confirmed his observations of what we now know as M97, M109 and M108. At the time Messier had not assigned a position to M109 and M108, and therefore they were not included in the final catalogue. It was only in 1953 that historian Owen Gingerich added them to the official Messier catalogue. Although some historians think that Méchain may not have been looking at M109 (NGC 3992), but actually at NGC 3953 because of his descriptions, suggesting that it may have been Messier who really discovered M109.