Galaxy in Virgo
M89
The roundest elliptical known, at least from where we happen to be standing. Faint shells of stars reach well beyond the bright part, the settled debris of other galaxies it has absorbed.
It also has a jet of hot gas reaching a hundred thousand light-years out, and a halo far larger than the visible galaxy, both of which say that its present quiet is recent. Whether it is genuinely spherical or a lens seen end-on cannot be settled from one viewpoint, which is a limitation the catalogue runs into more often than it admits.
- Catalogue
- M89
- Type
- Galaxy
- Constellation
- Virgo
- Distance
- 50 million light-years
- Apparent magnitude
- 9.8
- Surface brightness
- 21.4 mag/□″
- Apparent size
- 4′
- Right ascension
- 12h 36m
- Declination
- +12.55°
- Found by
- Charles Messier, 1781
Small enough that its 9.8 magnitudes arrive concentrated rather than smeared: 21.4 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 4; with a 200mm 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 | No | Easy | Easy | Easy |
| Bortle 6 19.3 mag/□″ | No | No | 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
Round, small, smooth and about as plain as a galaxy gets at the eyepiece — there is genuinely nothing to see beyond a brightening toward the middle. The shells that make it interesting are far beyond visual reach. A completeness object in a crowded field.
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 M89 itself, not from the middle of Virgo.
- M90 Galaxy 40′ apart Virgo · magnitude 9.5 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M58 Galaxy 53′ apart Virgo · magnitude 9.7 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M87 Virgo A 1.2° apart Virgo · magnitude 8.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M59 Galaxy 1.8° apart Virgo · magnitude 9.6 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
One of 110. Positions J2000; the sky is the final authority.