Galaxy
M86 (M86)
In Virgo (Vir) • Magnitude 9.2 • 8.9 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M86 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
One of the rare galaxies moving toward us rather than away — blueshifted at 244 km/s — because it is falling inward through the Virgo Cluster under the combined gravitational pull of thousands of galaxies. In a universe where everything is generally rushing apart, M86 is a notable exception.
M86 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M86, N 4406 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Virgo (Vir) |
| Right ascension | 12h 26m 13s |
| Declination | +12° 57' 36" |
| Apparent magnitude | 9.21 |
| Surface brightness | 13.1 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 8.9 × 5.8 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 58° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image M86
M86 sits in the constellation Virgo at right ascension 12h 26m 13s and declination +12° 57' 36". 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, M86 needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.