Galaxy in Leo
M95
A barred spiral with a ring of star formation around the core, textbook enough that it genuinely turns up in textbooks. At the eyepiece all of that collapses into a faint oval; the structure is a photographic matter.
The ring around the core is about two thousand light-years across and is where nearly all the galaxy's star formation now happens — gas funnelled inward along the bar and piling up where the orbits change character. A supernova appeared in it in 2012 and was caught two days after the explosion.
- Catalogue
- M95
- Type
- Galaxy
- Constellation
- Leo
- Distance
- 33 million light-years
- Apparent magnitude
- 9.7
- Surface brightness
- 22.2 mag/□″
- Apparent size
- 7′ × 5′
- Right ascension
- 10h 44m
- Declination
- +11.70°
- Found by
- Pierre Méchain, 1781
Small enough that its 9.7 magnitudes arrive concentrated rather than smeared: 22.2 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.
| 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 | Challenge | Challenge | Challenge |
| Bortle 6 19.3 mag/□″ | No | No | No | No | No |
| 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 faint oval with a marginally brighter centre and no visible bar at ordinary apertures. Its value is that it shares a low-power field with M96, so you get two galaxies for one pointing — and M105 is only a degree away, which makes three.
When, and from where
Highest in the middle of the night in March. 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 →2 more of the catalogue sit within five degrees, close enough to take in on the same night without moving far. Everything below is measured from M95 itself, not from the middle of Leo.
- M96 Galaxy 42′ apart Leo · magnitude 9.2 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M105 Galaxy 1.3° apart Leo · magnitude 9.3 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M65 Galaxy 8.6° apart Leo · magnitude 9.3 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M66 Galaxy 8.9° apart Leo · magnitude 8.9 · binoculars from Bortle 6 or darker
One of 110. Positions J2000; the sky is the final authority.