M106 is one of Pierre Méchain's findings, which were later appended as additional objects to Charles Messier's catalog. In case of M106, it was Helen Sawyer Hogg who added it together with M105 and M107 in 1947, but it appears reasonable to assume that already Méchain had intended to add it to a future edition. William Herschel had numbered it H V.43 when cataloging it on March 9, 1788.

The bright Sb spiral galaxy M106 is perhaps about 21 to 25 million light years distant. It is receding at 537 km/sec.
It may be a member of the Ursa Major cloud, a loose agglomeration of galaxies which probably also homes M108 and M109. As its equatorial plane is similarly inclined to the line of sight, many features resemble what we know from the Andromeda galaxy M31. This orientation explains partly why the dust lanes are so prominent in this galaxy. They form a spiral pattern which can be traced well into its bright central region to the core. The spiral arms apparently end in bright blue knots. These knots are most probably young star clusters which are dominated by their very hot, brightest and most massive stars; the occurance of these hot stars indictes that these clusters cannot be very old, as such massive stars have only a short lifetime of a few million years. So the blue knots show us the regions of very recent star formation!

Following the spiral arms in the sense of rotation, and most conspicuous on the right of our image, is the yellowish remnant of an older spiral arm. The color of this arm indicates that its more massive stars have ceased to shine long ago, the color of the remaining ones sums up to the yellow-greenish appearance. The age of the stellar population in this fossil spiral arm is estimated to several hundred million years.

A supernova (1981K) occured im M106 in August 1981 and reached 16th magnitude.