Discovered 1779 by Edward Pigott.

M64, located approximately 19 million light years distant, is the famous "Black Eye Galaxy" and sometimes also called the "Sleeping Beauty Galaxy".  The conspicuous dark structure is a prominent dust feature obscuring the stars behind.  This dust feature is well visible even in smaller telescopes.

M64 was recently shown to have two counterrotating systems of stars and gas in its disk: The inner part of about 3,000 light years radius is rubbing along the inner edge of the outer disk, which rotates opposite and extends up to at least 40,000 light years, at about 300 km/sec.  This rubbing process is probably the reason for the observed vigorous star formation process, which is currently under way, and can be observed as bright knots imbedded in the dust lane on one side of the nucleus.  It is speculated that this peculiar disk and dust lane may be caused by material from a former companion which has been accreted but has yet to settle into the mean orbital plane of the disk.

¹http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m064.html