Galaxy in Virgo
M84
One end of Markarian's Chain, a curving line of galaxies that fits inside a single low-power field: sweep along it and you cross fifty million light-years without moving the telescope more than a nudge. 5 billion suns sits at this end.
The chain is real rather than a projection: at least seven of the galaxies in it are moving together. M84 itself has two jets of radio-emitting plasma coming out of the core, and gas near the centre has been clocked whipping round fast enough that the mass it is orbiting can only be a black hole.
- Catalogue
- M84
- Type
- Galaxy
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Distance
- 60 million light-years
- Apparent magnitude
- 9.1
- Surface brightness
- 21.0 mag/□″
- Apparent size
- 5′ × 4′
- Right ascension
- 12h 25m
- Declination
- +12.88°
- Found by
- Charles Messier, 1781
Small enough that its 9.1 magnitudes arrive concentrated rather than smeared: 21.0 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 | Challenge | Challenge | Challenge |
| Bortle 8 18.1 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
| Bortle 9 17.8 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
At the eyepiece
Best used as a starting point rather than a destination. Put it at the edge of a low-power field and drift east, and galaxy after galaxy comes through — Markarian's Chain. Counting how many you can hold at once is a better use of the evening than staring at any one of them.
When, and from where
Highest in the middle of the night in March. Passes overhead at 13°N and rises from everywhere except the far south — below 77°S it never clears the horizon.
| Latitude | Highest it gets | |
|---|---|---|
| 60°N Oslo, Anchorage | 43° | |
| 51°N London, Calgary | 52° | |
| 40°N New York, Madrid | 63° | |
| 30°N Cairo, Houston | 73° | |
| 0°N the equator | 77° | |
| 33°S Sydney, Cape Town | 44° |
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 M84 itself, not from the middle of Virgo.
- M86 Galaxy 17′ apart Virgo · magnitude 8.9 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M87 Virgo A 1.5° apart Virgo · magnitude 8.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M99 Galaxy 2.2° apart Coma Berenices · magnitude 9.9 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M88 Galaxy 2.3° apart Coma Berenices · magnitude 9.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
One of 110. Positions J2000; the sky is the final authority.