Galaxy
Virgo A (M87)
In Virgo (Vir) • Magnitude 9.6 • 8.3 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Virgo A pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
The giant of the Virgo Cluster — one of the most massive nearby galaxies, containing trillions of stars and roughly 15,000 globular clusters. In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first-ever direct image of a black hole's shadow using the 6.5-billion-solar-mass monster at M87's centre.
Virgo A at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M87, N 4486 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Virgo (Vir) |
| Right ascension | 12h 30m 47s |
| Declination | +12° 23' 24" |
| Apparent magnitude | 9.59 |
| Surface brightness | 13.5 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 8.3 × 6.6 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 57° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image Virgo A
Virgo A sits in the constellation Virgo at right ascension 12h 30m 47s and declination +12° 23' 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, Virgo A needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.