Galaxy
M88 (M88)
In Coma Berenices (Com) • Magnitude 9.6 • 7.0 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M88 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
A classic grand-design spiral with well-defined arms and a prominent dust lane. It was one of the original galaxies Edwin Hubble and Milton Humason studied in the 1920s to build the evidence that galaxies are moving away from us, helping confirm one of the most transformative discoveries in science: the expanding universe.
M88 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M88, N 4501 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices (Com) |
| Right ascension | 12h 31m 59s |
| Declination | +14° 25' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 9.59 |
| Surface brightness | 12.9 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 7.0 × 3.7 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 59° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image M88
M88 sits in the constellation Coma Berenices at right ascension 12h 31m 59s and declination +14° 25' 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, M88 needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.