Galaxy
Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (M83)
In Hydra (Hya) • Magnitude 7.5 • 13 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Southern Pinwheel Galaxy pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
One of the closest and brightest barred spirals in the sky, with grand sweeping arms packed with pink star-forming regions and young blue star clusters. At least 6 supernovae have been recorded in M83 since 1923 — more than almost any other galaxy — giving astronomers a front-row seat to stellar death over a century of observations.
Southern Pinwheel Galaxy at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M83, N 5236 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Hydra (Hya) |
| Right ascension | 13h 37m 01s |
| Declination | -29° 52' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 7.54 |
| Surface brightness | 13.2 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 13.0 × 11.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 15° |
| Best imaging months | Jan, Feb, Mar |
How to image Southern Pinwheel Galaxy
Southern Pinwheel Galaxy sits in the constellation Hydra at right ascension 13h 37m 01s and declination -29° 52' 12". 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, Southern Pinwheel Galaxy needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.