Galaxy
M49 (M49)
In Virgo (Vir) • Magnitude 8.4 • 10 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M49 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
The first galaxy discovered in the Virgo Cluster and the brightest member of that enormous concentration of over 1,300 galaxies. It harbours an estimated 6,000 globular clusters in orbit around it — about 40 times more than circle our own Milky Way.
M49 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M49, N 4472 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Virgo (Vir) |
| Right ascension | 12h 29m 49s |
| Declination | +07° 59' 24" |
| Apparent magnitude | 8.40 |
| Surface brightness | 12.7 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 10.0 × 8.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 53° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image M49
M49 sits in the constellation Virgo at right ascension 12h 29m 49s and declination +07° 59' 24". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window. As a galaxy, M49 needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.