Galaxy in Virgo
M49
Brightest of the fifteen hundred or so galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, and the earliest of them to be catalogued. An elliptical: no arms, no dust, no star formation — a very large number of very old stars and almost nothing happening.
It holds something like six thousand globular clusters — forty times our own galaxy's supply, most of them taken from smaller galaxies it has absorbed. A supernova went off in it in 1969, the first ever seen in a Virgo Cluster galaxy, which for an elliptical with essentially no young stars was a genuine surprise.
- Catalogue
- M49
- Type
- Galaxy
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Distance
- 56 million light-years
- Apparent magnitude
- 8.4
- Surface brightness
- 21.5 mag/□″
- Apparent size
- 9′ × 7′
- Right ascension
- 12h 30m
- Declination
- +8.00°
- Found by
- Charles Messier, 1771
Small enough that its 8.4 magnitudes arrive concentrated rather than smeared: 21.5 per square arcsecond, which is why it stands out from the sky better than its brightness alone suggests. Why surface brightness is the number that matters.
Could you see it?
Straightforward with 10×50 binoculars from Bortle 5.
| Sky | Eye | 10×50 | 80mm | 130mm | 200mm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1 21.9 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 2 21.7 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 3 21.4 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 4 20.9 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 5 20.3 mag/□″ | No | Easy | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 6 19.3 mag/□″ | No | Challenge | Challenge | Challenge | Challenge |
| Bortle 7 18.6 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
| Bortle 8 18.1 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
| Bortle 9 17.8 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
At the eyepiece
A featureless bright oval, and that is all it will ever be — an elliptical galaxy has no structure to give up. What makes it worth the trip is context: it is the anchor of the Virgo Cluster, and once you have found it the rest of that crowded region becomes navigable.
When, and from where
Highest in the middle of the night in March. Close enough to the celestial equator to rise from almost anywhere on Earth, and to pass overhead for anyone near 8°N.
| Latitude | Highest it gets | |
|---|---|---|
| 60°N Oslo, Anchorage | 38° | |
| 51°N London, Calgary | 47° | |
| 40°N New York, Madrid | 58° | |
| 30°N Cairo, Houston | 68° | |
| 0°N the equator | 82° | |
| 33°S Sydney, Cape Town | 49° |
Nearby in the sky
The whole catalogue →This is a busy patch. 4 more of the catalogue sit within five degrees, which is a binocular field or two — worth planning a session around rather than visiting once. Everything below is measured from M49 itself, not from the middle of Virgo.
- M61 Galaxy 4.0° apart Virgo · magnitude 9.7 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M58 Galaxy 4.3° apart Virgo · magnitude 9.7 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M87 Virgo A 4.4° apart Virgo · magnitude 8.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M59 Galaxy 4.7° apart Virgo · magnitude 9.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
One of 110. Positions J2000; the sky is the final authority.