Galaxy in Virgo
M60
A giant elliptical with a spiral apparently touching it, and unlike most such pairings this one is not a trick of alignment. They are close enough to be tugging measurably at each other, though not yet close enough for either to be in trouble.
M60 also holds one of the densest galaxies known — M60-UCD1, a compact dwarf of some twenty million stars packed into a hundred light-years, almost certainly the stripped core of something larger it took apart. The spiral touching it, NGC 4647, shows no sign yet of the same fate.
- Catalogue
- M60
- Type
- Galaxy
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Distance
- 55 million light-years
- Apparent magnitude
- 8.8
- Surface brightness
- 21.5 mag/□″
- Apparent size
- 7′ × 6′
- Right ascension
- 12h 44m
- Declination
- +11.55°
- Found by
- Johann Gottfried Koehler, 1779
Small enough that its 8.8 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
Bright, round and easy, with the spiral NGC 4647 just north-west of it — visible at 200mm from a good sky as a much fainter smudge on the edge of the glow. Seeing both together is worth the effort, because you are looking at two galaxies actually near each other rather than the usual accident.
When, and from where
Highest in the middle of the night in April. Passes overhead at 12°N and rises from everywhere except the far south — below 78°S it never clears the horizon.
| Latitude | Highest it gets | |
|---|---|---|
| 60°N Oslo, Anchorage | 42° | |
| 51°N London, Calgary | 51° | |
| 40°N New York, Madrid | 62° | |
| 30°N Cairo, Houston | 72° | |
| 0°N the equator | 78° | |
| 33°S Sydney, Cape Town | 45° |
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 M60 itself, not from the middle of Virgo.
- M59 Galaxy 26′ apart Virgo · magnitude 9.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M58 Galaxy 1.5° apart Virgo · magnitude 9.7 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M89 Galaxy 2.2° apart Virgo · magnitude 9.8 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M90 Galaxy 2.3° apart Virgo · magnitude 9.5 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
One of 110. Positions J2000; the sky is the final authority.