Galaxy in Virgo
M86
Falling through the Virgo Cluster fast enough to be coming at us, which makes it one of the very few galaxies in the sky that is blueshifted rather than red. It is being stripped of its gas on the way through.
It is approaching at about 240 kilometres a second while the cluster as a whole recedes at a thousand, which is the measure of how fast it is falling through. Behind it trails a plume of stripped gas some four hundred thousand light-years long, torn out by the pressure of moving through the cluster's own thin atmosphere.
- Catalogue
- M86
- Type
- Galaxy
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Distance
- 52 million light-years
- Apparent magnitude
- 8.9
- Surface brightness
- 21.6 mag/□″
- Apparent size
- 7′ × 6′
- Right ascension
- 12h 26m
- Declination
- +12.95°
- Found by
- Charles Messier, 1781
Small enough that its 8.9 magnitudes arrive concentrated rather than smeared: 21.6 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
One half of a pair with M84 that fits comfortably in the same eyepiece, and the pair together are the anchor of Markarian's Chain. Slightly the more elongated of the two, and slightly the brighter, though telling them apart on looks alone is not straightforward.
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 M86 itself, not from the middle of Virgo.
- M84 Galaxy 17′ apart Virgo · magnitude 9.1 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M87 Virgo A 1.2° apart Virgo · magnitude 8.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M88 Galaxy 2.0° apart Coma Berenices · magnitude 9.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M99 Galaxy 2.3° apart Coma Berenices · magnitude 9.9 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
One of 110. Positions J2000; the sky is the final authority.