Charles Messier recorded the the coordinates and a brief description of M108 in his personal copy of his catalog but it does not appear in the published catalog. It was added to the catalog (along with m103 through m110) after his death.
M108 has neither a central bulge nor any pronounced core. It appears rather chaotic lacking any semblance of a spiral (even thought classified as an Sc) and with only a few H II regions and young stars. It does have a smoky heavy obscuration along the major axis.
M108 a member of the M51 (Ursa Major cloud), is at about 45 million light years and has a recession velocity of 772km/sec.
The color data and a portion of the luminance data was collected with 88 percent illuminated moon in the night sky.
There is a very faint object (asteroid?) moving in a left up-ward direction just above the galaxy as well as numerous distant galaxies in the image.
Penryn, California
April, 2003
FS-128 (ag, ST-4)
ST-10XME lrgb 15,10,10,10 minutes