Galaxy in Coma Berenices
M98
Coming toward us at 140 kilometres a second, which makes it one of a handful of blueshifted galaxies: it is falling through the Virgo Cluster in our direction faster than the space between us can expand.
It also has a disturbed, asymmetric disc and a dust lane that is visibly out of true, both of which point at an encounter with M99 some time in the last few hundred million years. Faint enough at magnitude 10 to want a genuinely dark night, and edge-on enough to read as a line rather than an ellipse.
- Catalogue
- M98
- Type
- Galaxy
- Constellation
- Coma Berenices
- Distance
- 44 million light-years
- Apparent magnitude
- 10.1
- Surface brightness
- 22.4 mag/□″
- Apparent size
- 10′ × 3′
- Right ascension
- 12h 14m
- Declination
- +14.90°
- Found by
- Pierre Méchain, 1781
Small enough that its 10.1 magnitudes arrive concentrated rather than smeared: 22.4 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.
| 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
Nearly edge-on and therefore a thin streak, one of the harder Virgo galaxies despite its size — all that length and very little surface brightness. Needs a dark sky, and rewards low power and averted vision rather than magnification.
When, and from where
Highest in the middle of the night in March. Passes overhead at 15°N and rises from everywhere except the far south — below 75°S it never clears the horizon.
| Latitude | Highest it gets | |
|---|---|---|
| 60°N Oslo, Anchorage | 45° | |
| 51°N London, Calgary | 54° | |
| 40°N New York, Madrid | 65° | |
| 30°N Cairo, Houston | 75° | |
| 0°N the equator | 75° | |
| 33°S Sydney, Cape Town | 42° |
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 M98 itself, not from the middle of Coma Berenices.
- M99 Galaxy 1.3° apart Coma Berenices · magnitude 9.9 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M100 Galaxy 2.4° apart Coma Berenices · magnitude 9.3 · binoculars from Bortle 4 or darker
- M84 Galaxy 3.4° apart Virgo · magnitude 9.1 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
- M86 Galaxy 3.6° apart Virgo · magnitude 8.9 · binoculars from Bortle 5 or darker
One of 110. Positions J2000; the sky is the final authority.